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WHEN I WAS A BOY 
IN IRELAND 
















BLARNEY CASTLE 




WHEN 

I WAS A BOY 
IN IRELAND 



Alan M. Buck 


New York 

LOTHROP, LEE AND SHEPARD COMPANY 

1936 


1 . 




Copyright, 1936, by ^ 

LOTHROP, LEE AND SHEPARD COMPANY 

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be re¬ 
produced in any form without permission in writing 
from the publisher, except by a reviewer who wishes 
to quote brief passages in connection with a review 
written for inclusion in magazine or newspaper. 

Printed October, 1936 



PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 


100582 0 

Nu¬ 


clei A 
NOV 18 1936 


t: I ■ 


TO 

Henry Kellett Chambers 
and 

Maria Cristina Chambers 



/ 







CONTENTS 


CHAPTER 

One. 

Those Early Years 

• 

PAGE 

9 

Two. 

School and Play . 

• 

24 

Three. 

Mount Saint Benedict 

• 

43 

Four. 

Rebellion 

• 

57 

Five. 

The Waters of the River 

Lee ..... 

70 

Six. 

Daoine Sidhe or The Fairy 
People .... 

85 

Seven. 

A Visit to Roscrea and 
JBirr .... 

TO 

• 

101 

Eight. 

Knockarlow 

• 

117 

Nine. 

The Noble Countess . 

• 

136 

Ten. 

Waterpark . 

• 

150 

Eleven. 

Failure and Farewell 

« 

162 


vii 




When I Was a Boy 
in Ireland 


CHAPTER ONE 

THOSE EARLY YEARS 

I WAS born in Ireland on my parents’ 
farm, one mile distant from the town of 
Tramore; Tramore, in turn, being seven 
miles distant from the city of Waterford, 
in the southern province of Munster. 

At an early age, I learned from my 
father who spoke Gaelic, that Tramore 
was so called because of the long stretch 
of smooth, golden sand lying between the 
two promontories of Tramore Bay, the 
name being a corruption of the Gaelic 
words, Triag mor, which means Big 
Strand. 


9 


10 When I Was a Boy in Ireland 

It is with the Big Strand that I associ¬ 
ate some of my happiest boyhood mem¬ 
ories. Mother, Father, my brother Bobby, 
and I loved to walk on the Strand. Some¬ 
times, we went as far as the Rabbit Bur¬ 
row, a group of sand dunes overrun with 
rabbits over whose destiny, Gullamugus, 
the terrible gnome on horseback is said to 
preside. It is because of fear of Gul¬ 
lamugus that the people of Tramore will 
not kill or eat a Burrow rabbit: “Once 
upon a time,” they will tell you, “a man 
killed and ate a Burrow rabbit and he 
was not seen ever afterwards because 
Gullamugus, riding a powerful white stal¬ 
lion, caught up with him and took him 
prisoner.” 

Our way to the Rabbit Burrow lay by 
the Women’s and INIen’s bathing slips. 

Bobby and I thought they were called 
slips because people were forever slipping 
on the slimy, green seaweed clinging to 
their already barnacle-encrusted cement 


Those Early Years 11 

floors. Mother corrected our wrons* im- 

O 

pression one day, however, telling us a 
slip was another name for a dock. 

Both slips, as I remember them, were 
lined with heavy, wooden bathing boxes 
on wheels. When the tide ebbed, the 
boxes were wheeled from their slips across 
the sand to the water’s edge for the con¬ 
venience of bathers. 

An imaginary boundary line divided 
the two slips, since mixed bathing was 
not permitted. I recall listening once to 
a woman in charge of the Women’s Bath¬ 
ing Slip berating a man who swam across 
the boundary line into “female waters.” 
She was quite beside herself at the enor¬ 
mity of his offense and called him a black¬ 
guard and other names and threatened to 
set the peelers, as our police were then 
called, after him. 

It was this same woman who, when 
Bobby and I, being very little, went 
bathing with Mother from the Women’s 


12 When I Was a Boy in Ireland 

Slip, used to tell us she had just poured 
a kettle of hot water into the sea to make 
it warm for us. 

Usually, on Sunday afternoons, we 
went driving in a pony and trap. Our 
favorite drive was to the Metal Man. We 
would start out after two o’clock dinner 
and while the pony jogged along at a 
slow trot, amuse ourselves noting the 
changes wrought by the passing seasons 
in our favorite “beauty spots.” One of 
these “beauty spots” I remember particu¬ 
larly well. We named it, appropriately 
enough, “the Nest,” for in summer it re¬ 
sembled a gigantic bird’s nest woven of 
sweetly perfumed, yellow flowering, 
prickly green furze bush. It had grown 
naturally into this formation on the sum¬ 
mit of a grass-covered bank hardby a 
gravelled road that wandered casually 
along the edge of a red clay cliff to the 
Metal Man. 


Those Eai'ly Years 13 

On one such drive, Father left us at 
the Metal Man while he drove to the 
nearby village of Fenner to inspect a 
horse he wished to buy. 

The occasion lingers in my mind because 
it was on that day I first became conscious 
of my mother’s beauty and, becoming con¬ 
scious of it, I also was frightened by it; 
frightened in the sense of being filled 
with a reverential awe. 

She looked like a mermaid sitting there 
on the grass with my brother and me. 
She had taken off her hat and let down 
her waist-length ebon hair that it might 
become friendly with the sea breeze. Her 
eyelashes curled out from and above her 
half closed, brown eyes and a calm rest¬ 
ful smile lingered on her full red lips as 
she listened to our childish prattle. 

The Metal Man, overlooking the At¬ 
lantic Ocean from the tip of a rocky 
promontory, is as the name suggests, the 


14 When I Was a Boy in Ireland 

figure of a man cast in metal. His iron 
clothes proclaim him a mariner. Atop a 
whitewashed stone pillar he stands, his 
right arm pointing out to sea, warning 
passing ships of the dangerous rocks be¬ 
neath him. 

On dark and stormy nights when har¬ 
assed sailors are unable to see him over 
the foaming crests of mountainous, an¬ 
grily see-sawing waves, the Metal Man, 
it is believed, recites a little rhyme in loud 
and sonorous tones that the sailors may 
hear him. JNIother taught us the rhyme 
that afternoon when Father was in Fen¬ 
ner. I have never forgotten it. It is— 

Keep out, keep out from me. 

I am the rocks of Misery! 

Many times, when visiting the Metal 
Man, we beheld the unusual sight of 
numerous young ladies busily hopping 
’round the pillar on which the Metal Man 
stands. 




IRON MEN 















































































THE “MEN’S" BATHING PLACE 







15 


Those Early Years 

At first, Bobby and I were vastly 
amused, believing them to be playing a 
variation of the game of “Beddies,” as 
hop-scotch is called in Tramore. But • 
' when Father explained their real purpose, 
we tempered our amusement with the de¬ 
sire that they might be successful in their 
endeavor. 

“If the young ladies can hop around 
the pillar three times without letting their 
lifted foot touch ground, the Metal Man 
guarantees they will be married within a 
twelvemonth,” Father told us. 

It is a difficult feat to accomplish. The 
pillar has a wide circumference and, the 
hopeful young ladies will tell you, it 
grows each time you round it. Also, at 
the base of the pillar, sharp stones were 
strewn. How they got there was con¬ 
sidered something of a mystery, although 
Father claimed to have solved the mystery 
by taking Mike Dermody, a local cobbler 
who profited greatly by repairing the 


16 When I Was a Boy in Ireland 

young ladies’ lacerated shoes, into con¬ 
sideration. 

I remember a neighbor of ours who 
married a girl who had made the grade in 
the matter of hopping ’round the Metal 
Man. The girl, it seems, was possessed 
of a lashing tongue, a fact she concealed 
from her bridegroom until the honeymoon 
was over. The disillusioned bridegroom 
was heard to complain bitterly to Paddy 
Reilly, our stable boy, and his complaints 
were directed not against his bride but 
against the Metal Man. 

“Paddy me boy,” said he, “will you be 
after telling me what we do be doing with 
a Metal Man when with one arm he 
pushes man out of danger and with the 
other he pushes him into it?” 

“I take it, Tommy darlint, you’re 
meanin’ the holy sacrament of Matri¬ 
mony,” Paddy made answer. 

“I am that, Paddy. May the devil run 
away with the Metal Man this very night,” 
Tommy shamelessly decried. 


17 


Those Early Years 

There are two odors associated with my 
childhood, either of which is capable of 
carrying me back to my native land. I 
have named them my magic carpets. 

The first of these odors is that of burn¬ 
ing turf, an odor I came to love sitting by 
the open hearth in our roomy, red-flagged 
kitchen. It has a suggestion of the odor 
of burning leaves, but is a heavy, more 
penetrating odor. It passes beyond the 
nostrils into the brain and lingers there, 
druglike. I believe this odor to be re¬ 
sponsible in part, for my leaning towards 
things beyond the Veil, things not of this 
world; fairies and the like. 

A ghost story told while sitting ’round 
a turf fire is something more than a mere 
story. The ghost joins the company. 
His presence can be felt. Occasionally, a 
listener will make the Sign of the Cross 
and huddle closer to his neighbor. When 
he does, you may be quite sure, he has felt 
a supernatural being hover over him. 

Yes, there is something eerie about the 


18 When I Was a Boy in Ii'eland 

odor of burning turf and something wild 
and untamable too, a something which is 
so closely allied with the Irish nature as 
to be almost part of it! 

The other odor, while less spiritual in its 
effect is, to me, as disturbing. Looking 
back, it seems I was born into this odor, 
the odor of horse. Talcum powder was 
useless against its strength, scented bath 
soap quailed and dissolved in its presence 
and sensitive people buried their noses in 
handkerchiefs at its approach. I have 
since come to look upon the odor as a sort 
of natural inheritance from my mother 
who loved horses and from my father who 
when he was a boy ran away from home 
to be a jockey. So well did he succeed 
that when Boss Croker, the American 
politician settled in Ireland, my father 
was his leading jockey, riding such great 
a horse as Orby to victory in the Liver¬ 
pool cup in England, for his employer. 
Later Orby won the English Derby and it 


19 


Those Early Years 

nearly broke my father’s heart that Boss 
Croker instead of giving him the mount, 
sent him to ride in America. 

Truly, the odor of horse was instilled in 
my blood! I remember being in church 
one Sunday morning with Mother, Father 
and Bobby, all of us dressed in our Sun¬ 
day best, and hearing an elderly lady in 
an adjoining pew sniff disdainfully and 
remark audibly to our great embarrass¬ 
ment: “Sure they might as well have come 
on horseback, wearing breeches and leg¬ 
gings.” 

The riding of a horse, however, remains 
and always will remain one of my painful 
boyhood memories. 

I was five years of age. Father had re¬ 
cently bought a highly bred chestnut 
hunter whose tremendous strength, great 
staying powers and jumping ability were 
obvious at a glance. So enthusiastic did 
I become about this horse that I was filled 
with an uncontrollable desire to ride him. 


20 When I Was a Boy in Ireland 

But father refused my request, saying 
such a horse was a man’s horse, that he 
would without doubt pull my puny arms 
from their sockets. Unconvinced, I 
sought out Paddy Beilly whose duties 
included grooming the horse. 

“Faith,” Paddy protested, “y^^ might 
as well think of riding the devil and he 
not wanting you on him, as riding that 
beast.” 

“I wouldn’t mind riding the devil if only 
he had four legs which he hasn’t,” I boldly 
replied. 

Coming from one so young, this remark 
amused Paddy and won him to my cause. 
After laughing heartily, he agreed to 
grant my wish, making me promise, how¬ 
ever, not to take the horse outside the 
yard gates. 

I broke my promise the moment Pad¬ 
dy’s back was turned and calmly piloted 
my mount out onto the drive and into the 
three acre field fronting the house. There 


21 


Those Early Years 

I prodded him to action with heels scarcely 
reaching his sides. Alas, I got more ac¬ 
tion than I bargained for, for the horse 
broke into a brisk canter and coming to 
the stone wall bounding the field took it in 
his stride, leaving himself on one side, me 
on the other. 

Several days later, limping and ill at 
ease, I again approached the stables. 
What Paddy would say was my chief con¬ 
cern. I came on him, sitting on a three 
legged milking stool in the cow house, 
whittling and whistling at one and the 
same time; ‘'That was a bad fall you took, 
alanna!” he greeted me. 

“It was all of that, Paddy,” I nervously 
agreed. 

“Puts me in mind of a fall I took meself 
a couple of years back,” Paddy ruminated, 
looking me straight in the eye. 

“Tell me about it,” I prompted, seeking 
salve for my wounded pride. 

“This was the way of it,” he complied. 


22 When I Was a Boy in Ireland 

“I was working for Jack Murphy of Dun- 
more at the time and nothing would do 
Jack but to enter a horse of his in a little 
bit of a race meeting down Ballyhack 
way in the county Wexford. When we 
got there, what do ye think happened, 
alanna?” 

“Jack Murphy let you ride his horse 
instead of riding it himself,’' I guessed. 

“Jack Murphy do the like of that! 
Divil the bit of him! Jack wouldn’t let 
the Archbishop himself throw leg across 
the critter.” 

“Well, what then, Paddy?” 

“They made me start the races, that’s 
what they did and let you listen to what 
happened. First off, they put me up on 
a scrawny looking nag to ride to the start¬ 
ing post. To look at him, you would not 
say he had the breath of life in him. But 
he had. Faith and indeed he had! When 
I dropped my cap by way of starting the 
first race, off he raced after the rest of 


23 


Those Early Years 

the horses and he not knowing any better, 
and a full four furlongs he went with 
them before the excitement got the better 
of him and he flew the course, rolling over 
and over like a sack of ‘spuds’ for all the 
world, and me under him the while. Now, 
what do you think of that, you who would 
be riding the devil himself had he four 
legs, no less?” 

“Aw, I think you are only telling me 
that for the cod,” I said, knowing he was 
trying to set me at ease with him and 
knowing too, full well, the horse had yet 
to be foaled to throw the same Paddy 
Reilly. 


CHAPTER TWO 

SCHOOL AND PLAY 

One morning, Mother and I walked 
with Bobby to the Convent of the Sisters 
of Mercy where he was to attend school. 

The Sister who received us asked if I, 
too, would like to go to school. 

“Yes, indeed. Sister!” I answered, be¬ 
ing tormented with jealousy at the 
thought of Bobby doing something I 
could not share in doing. Mother inter¬ 
vened, however, pronouncing me too 
young. 

“I only suggested it because I thought 
he might be lonely at home without his 
brother,” the Sister apologetically ex¬ 
plained. 

“I would be terribly lonely. Mother,” 
I wailed, forgetting, for the moment, that 


24 




25 


School and Play 

Bobby and I, at home, were as a pair of 
fighting cocks. 

“Very well then,” Mother relented. 
“You may stay but don’t come running 
to me tomorrow saying you don’t want 
to go to school.” 

So, it was, that Bobby and I began go¬ 
ing to school together. 

Miss Rodgers, our first teacher, was a 
jolly person with grey hair parted in the 
center and a rose-pink complexion that 
turned purple when she became angry. 

I remember her giving us little tin 
trays filled with sand in which we learned 
to write the letters of the alphabet. Later, 
when we had mastered the alphabet, we 
were given slates and slate pencils that 
made a screeching noise when pressed 
upon too heavily. 

We carried our lunch to school with us 
and at noon, after we had eaten, we played 
games in the stonewalled yard back of the 
classrooms. One of the games we played 


26 When I Was a Boy in Ireland 

was called, Here We Come Gathering 
Nuts in May, and it had a little song that 
went with it and was sung as two rows 
of boys and girls danced towards each 
other, changing positions when they came 
together. Here it is— 

Here we come gathering nuts in May. 

Here we come gathering nuts in May. 

Here we come gathering nuts in May, 

On a cold and frosty morning. 

It does not sound very exciting, does 
it? But it used to afford us a great deal 
of amusement. Perhaps I have forgotten 
part of it. I wonder! 

One day while I was eating my lunch, 
a pretty little girl came up to me and 
asked me this riddle— 

Pinchme and Punchme went out to swim. 

Pinchme was drowned. Who came in? 

“Punchme, of course,” I answered im¬ 
mediately. 




27 


School and Play 

“Sure, I will,” responded the little girl, 
administering a telling punch. 

Had Punchme drowned, I suppose she 
would have pinched me. There was no 
escape. 

This very same little girl was often 
called upon in singing class to sing with 
me a duet called, “Where Are You Going 
to My Pretty Maid?” For the life of 
me I cannot recall the music to which it 
was sung, but I remember the words; the 
very simple words: 


“Where are you going to, my pretty maid? 
“Where are you going to, my pretty maid?” 
“I’m goin’ a milkin’. Sir,” she said. 

“Sir,” she said. “Sir,” she said. 

“I’m goin’ a milkin’. Sir,” she said. 


“May I go with you, my pretty maid? 
“May I go with you, my pretty maid?” 
“You’re kindly welcome. Sir,” she said. 
“Sir,” she said. “Sir,” she said. 
“You’re kindly welcome. Sir,” she said. 


28 When I Was a Boy in Ireland 

“What is your fortune, my pretty maid? 
“What is your fortune, my pretty maid?” 

“My face is my fortune. Sir,” she said. 

“Sir,” she said. “Sir,” she said. 

“My face is my fortune. Sir,” she said. 

“Then I can’t marry you, my pretty maid. 
“Then I can’t marry you, my pretty maid.” 
“Nobody asked you. Sir,” she said. 

“Sir,” she said. “Sir,” she said. 

“Nobody asked you. Sir,” she said. 

“Why do the Sisters close the altars 
when an inspector conies to our school, 
Mother?” I asked, on my return home, 
one afternoon, having seen the altars shut¬ 
tered from sight that day. 

“The British Government governs the 
convents of Ireland and will not allow 
them to have altars in the classrooms,” 
Mother explained, a trace of resentment 
in her usually placid voice. 

“Is that why we have to sing, God 
Save the King, too, Mother?” 

“That is why, little man.” 


29 


School and Play 

“And is that why, when an inspector 
comes, the picture of the King and Queen 
is turned from the wall so that we can see 
it. Mother?” 

“Do they really do that?” Mother asked, 
her eyes welling with laughter. 

“Yes, indeed they do and there are al¬ 
ways cobwebs on the King and Queen 
when they are turned around.” 

“Cobwebs on the King and Queen!” 
Mother’s tinkling little laugh ran out, 
making me laugh too although I was not 
quite sure why I laughed. 

Father came into the room at that 
moment and Mother repeated what I had 
told her. Oh, how Father laughed his 
funniest laugh! Then, catching me up 
in his strong arms, he tossed me into the 
air, crying out: “We’ll make a good Irish¬ 
man out of you—a rebel, no less!” 

While at Convent school, I became 
friendly with my deskmate, Mickey 



30 When I Was a Boy in Ireland 

O’Brien. Mickey was a very good-looking 
little boy. He had black curly hair that 
danced jigs on his forehead, Irish blue 
eyes that were mirrors of innocence and 
a way of carrying himself that reminded 
one of winged cherubs around the throne 
of God. Thank Heaven, he belied his 
looks! He was a daredevil among dare¬ 
devils. His elastic catapult with which 
he shot paper bullets with unerring aim, 
was the dread of those unfortunate enough 
to be seated within a hundred yards of 
him; while his knowledge of birds made 
him a veritable king of boys in the town 
of Tramore. 

Mickey often invited me to his house 
for dinner and I never turned down an 
invitation because the meals served there 
were among the finest I have ever eaten. 
His mother, besides being an excellent 
cook, was of good heart and cheerful dis¬ 
position. She always made me feel at 
home with her. I have heard Mickey say 






31 


School and Play 

of her: “When God made my mother, He 
didn’t spare the sugar, for she’s the sweet¬ 
est woman in all Ireland!” 

Mickey’s father was a jarveyman, the 
name given in Ireland to men who drive 
jaunting cars for a living. He owned the 
best horse between shafts and the neatest 
jaunting car in Tramore. The car was 
painted all over yellow, having red plush 
cushions on its narrow side seats and on 
the little throne, or driver’s seat above the 
side seats in the center of the car. 

When he drove, Mr. O’Brien carried 
a long whip which Mickey respected with 
an almost holy respect. “Bring me the 
whip,” his father would say when Mickey 
was bold. Those words were sufficient to 
put Mickey on his good behavior for a 
week. To the best of my knowledge, the 
whip was never used except to flick flies 
from the horse’s back in summertime; 
Mr. O’Brien being an exceptionally kind 
and reserved man. 


32 When I Was a Boy in Ireland 

On one momentous occasion, Mickey 
took me on one of his bird studying trips. 
Shall I ever forget that day! Shall I ever 
forget the look of terrible surprise on my 
dear mother’s face when I returned home, 
my clothes in tatters, my face, hands and 
knees scratched and stained with blood, 
and my hair all entangled with briars. 
Studying the habits of birds with Mickey 
O’Brien certainly was an adventure! 

We started out, Mickey and I, early 
one Saturday morning and walked along 
the old Waterford road—at one time the 
only road between Waterford and Tra- 
more—past the rows of whitewashed cot¬ 
tages with their earthen floors and half 
doors, on by the race course and golf 
links to the Metal Bridge, over which the 
train passed a dozen or more times every 
day. 

At the Metal Bridge we cut across a 
ploughed field to a rookery where the 
rooks, seeing us from a distance, set up a 




School and Play 33 

mournful cawing and started to leave 
their nests. 

When we came close to the trees of the 
rookery, I saw they were straight and 
unclimbable as telegraph poles: 

“Mickey,” I ventured, “you’ll never be 
able to climb to see inside the nests.” 

“Sure I will,” boasted the youthful 
wizard and envy of my heart. “I’ll shin 
up. It’s easy when you have the know 
how.” 

Certainly it looked easy the way he 
went about it, hand over hand, leg over 
leg, until he reached the topmost branches. 
From my lowly position on terra firmaj I 
watched him pull out his little notebook 
and pencil and begin to make notes of 
what he saw inside the nests. Then care¬ 
fully, ever so carefully, he repocketed his 
notebook and descended to ground. 

Beside me once more, magnificently un¬ 
concerned by his success, Mickey told me 
what he had seen. For the most part the 


34 When I Was a Boy in Ireland 

twig crossed nests were empty. But in 
two of them he had seen eggs, greenish 
grey eggs spotted brown, as big as pi¬ 
geons’ eggs but more pointed at one end. 

“Sometimes,” Mickey revealed, “I 
come across bits of tin, old broken mir¬ 
rors, knives and all sorts of shiny things 
in their nests. They are the terrible 
thieves, you know!” I did not know but 
I just nodded my head as if I did, taking 
in at the same time all that he told me. 

From the rookery, we set off to find a 
robin’s nest, Mickey being anxious to learn 
what materials they used in building. 

After a terrific search we found one in 
the branches of a hawthorn tree. 

The tiny mother robin, a pocket edition 
of her cousin, the American robin, flew 
from her nest, frightened by our noise. 

What a cozy little home she had in com¬ 
parison to the dirty, cawing rooks 1 Made 
with wisps of hay and golden yellow 
straw, and lined with chestnut, grey and 








35 


School and Play 

black horsehair on which sat four light 
blue eggs marked with reddish spots, it 
presented a delightful contrast to the 
heavily scented, livid pink blossoms of 
the hawthorn tree. And all the while I 
stared amazed, Mickey was busily writ¬ 
ing down the things I stared at. 

“Did you ever hear tell how the robin 
came by his red breast?” he asked me, 
when he had finished writing. 

“No, Mickey, I never did,” I admitted. 

“Well, this was the way of it: when our 
Lord Jesus was on the road to Calvary, 
bowed down by the weight of His cross 
and bleeding from his thorn-pierced head, 
a wee robin in his standing on a bush by 
the wayside, saw Him, and like you or me 
would be, the robin was sorry at what he 
saw. Thought he to himself, it is a woe¬ 
ful thing I do be seeing before my eyes, 
a woeful thing entirely. Surely I can 
do something to put a stop to it! Forth- 
with he flew to Jesus and with his bill 


36 When I Was a Boy in Ireland 

began to pull the thorns from His head. 
But a divil of a soldier saw him and 
frightened him away. 

“When the robin got home later in the 
day, his wifeen^ Mrs. Robin, said to him, 
‘Is it a stain I do be seeing on your vest, 
husband mine?’ 

“The robin looked down and sure 
enough there was a deep red stain. ‘Faith 
and indeed it is nothing else,’ the robin 
admitted. ‘It must be the blood of Him 
from whose head I pulled thorns with my 
bill.’ And he told his wifeen all that had 
happened and she forgave him the stain. 
Between you and me, Al, I kind of think 
she thought it elegant and very becoming 
to him! And ever since that day robins 
have had red breasts. That’s my story.” 

“And a fine story too!” said I. 

Almost immediately, Mickey found a 
wren’s nest in a cluster of furze, over¬ 
hanging a muddy watered brook. N^ot 
until he pointed a circular opening in the 


37 


School and Play 

seemingly rumpled ball of emerald moss, 
did I really believe it was a nest. The 
little brown mother wren, her usually 
saucy, cocked up tail tilted at an angry 
angle, hovered over us while we explored 
her domed and wondrous home. Imagine 
our surprise and delight when we saw as 
many as fifteen yellow spotted white eggs 
nestling in its cozy feathered lining! 

“This for sure is the reason the wren 
is called the king of all birds!” I ex¬ 
claimed, never before having seen so many 
eggs together in a nest. 

“Faith, it’s not the reason,” Mickey 
flatly contradicted. 

“Well, if you’re so smart, what is the 
reason?” said I, mad at myself for know¬ 
ing nothing. 

“Is it standing there with your two big 
feet on the ground trying to tell me you 
don’t know, you are?” 

“Yes, Mickey,” I confessed humbly, 
ashamed of my anger. 


38 When I Was a Boy in Ireland 

“Sure I thought everyone knew the 
story,” said Mickey calmly. “Let you sit 
down here on the grass beside me and we’ll 
rest our legs while I enlighten your ig¬ 
norance.” 

When we were seated, he commenced. 

“A long time ago, all the birds from all 
over the world came to Ireland to find 
out which of them could fly the highest. 
They met right here in Tramore and at 
the signal of the curlew’s cry off they flew 
into the sky, hiding the sun from sight 
so many of,them they were. 

“It wasn’t long, however, before they 
started to flutter back to earth, tired out 
and breathing hard. After a while it 
looked as if the eagle was the only one left 
aloft. JVIore than a mile up and as proud 
of himself as any peacock, he was. 

“Didn’t he get the surprise of his life 
though when, all of a sudden, he heard a 
burst of song above him! 

“ ‘Begor,’ said he to himself, T’m up 


School and Play 39 

so high, it’s the birds of Heaven I do be 
hearing.’ 

“But, whisht, there was the song again, 
close to his ear, he thought. 

“ ‘By the tail of me ancestor, I’m 
licked,’ said he, turning the sharp eye of 
him over his left wing and seeing perched 
on his back, as smart as you please, a wee 
bit of a wren. 

“When he came to ground, the other 
birds put their laugh on him, saying the 
wren was their king. Sure enough, he 
was and sure enough, he still is and if you 
don’t believe me, you can ask my mother.” 

“Sure I believe you, Mickey. Sure, I 
do.” 

As we continued on our way, prying 
into bushes, brambles and hedges, I was 
thinking how strange it was the wren 
should be so famous. 

On Saint Stephen’s day, all over Ire¬ 
land, this tiny bird is honored. 


40 When I Was a Boy in Ireland 

Well do I remember Father giving us 
pennies to give to the wren boys on that 
day. 

The wren boys went from house to 
house in pairs, each one carrying a berib- 
boned furze bush hung with pasteboard 
images of the wren. They would come to 
the front door and knock very hard with 
the knocker to make certain of an audience 
before singing the wren song which, I am 
at a loss to explain why, has some very 
cruel lines, lines that are as untruthful 
as they are cruel, for no Irish boy would 
lay finger to a wren. The words of the 
wren song vary in different parts of Ire¬ 
land. It is the Waterford version, as 
sung in front of our house during my boy¬ 
hood, that I quote here: 

The wren, the wren, the king of all birds, 

On Saint Stephen’s day was caught in the 
furze. 

I up with my wattle and knocked him down, 
And brought him into Tramore town. 


41 


School and Play 

Now, Mr. Buck is a wealthy man, 

So, to his house we brought the wren. 

Pockets of money and barrels of beer. 

We wish you all, a Happy New Year! 

Up with the kettle and down with the pan. 
Give us some pence and let us be gone! 

At the conclusion of the wren song, 
Bobby and I took great delight in opening 
the door and distributing our pennies, 
receiving, in turn for our generosity, 
God's blessing on ourselves and on our 
home before the wren boys departed else¬ 
where. 

Mickey and I found one other nest that 
day, a swallow’s nest cleverly cemented 
with mud to a rafter in a broken down 
outhouse on a deserted farm. Two eggs 
were in the nest, freckled white eggs. 
Mickey took particulars of them and of 
the nest while I picked thorns from my 
legs and hands. Then when we were both 
ready, we started our long walk home 
in the evening twilight. 


42 When I Was a Boy in Ireland 

When at last we came to my house, 
we saw the cows ambling contentedly into 
their stalls, Paddy Reilly loitering behind 
them whistling the tune he was in the 
habit of whistling at milking time. “The 
Pretty Girl Milking the Cow,” it was 
called, a tune said to have been composed 
by the fairy people or by a mortal mu¬ 
sician the fairy people borrowed from his 
home and forgot to return. 

Mickey stayed to dinner that evening 
and after Mother had recovered from the 
shock of our appearance, and we had 
eaten, we spent the happy two hours sit¬ 
ting ’round the turf fire, telling and 
grossly exaggerating our adventures, 
aided by Mickey’s copious notes. 

Soon after that day, it was, Bobby and 
I left the Convent of the Sisters of Mercy, 
being considered too old to remain in a 
school devoted principally to girls. 



CHAPTER THREE 


MOUNT SAINT BENEDICT 

The train guard, he of the blue uniform 
and silver buttons, blew his shrill whistle, 
the engine driver pulled a cord, releasing 
an impatient snort of steam, the wheels 
began to chug, chug and Bobby and I 
hung our heads out of a third class car¬ 
riage window waving goodbye to Mother 
and Father who stood, bravely smiling, 
arm in arm, on the grey flagged platform 
of Waterford City station. 

It was not until the train rounded its 
first turn and picked up speed that we 
burst into tears. When we crossed the 
iron, trellis bridge, high above the river 
Barrow, to Wexford, we were crying as 
if our hearts would break. At length, an 


43 


44 When I Was a Boy in Ireland 

elderly man, the only other occupant of 
the carriage, intervened: 

“What in Christmas ails ye?” he in¬ 
quired in a gruff voice. 

“We . . . we’re going to boarding 
school,” Bobby blubbered. 

“We won’t see our Mother and Father 
for three whole months,” I sobbed. 

“God bless my soul this day but ye’re 
a fine pair of cry babies and no mistake. 
What do ye think your mother and father 
would say to your snivelling in a public 
conveyance? Answer me, will ye?” 

A frightened silence was our answer. 

“How old are ye?” The elderly man 
softened his voice. 

“I’m nine,” Bobby answered, and, nod¬ 
ding at me, added, “he’s eight.” 

“My soul to the hawks if it isn’t grown 
men ye are! Come over here and let me 
get a good look at ye.” 

We edged shyly towards the corner 
by a window where he sat. 


Mount Saint Benedict 45 

“Listen to me well, the two of ye now,” 
he counselled. “When I was your age, 
I was earning me own living away from 
home. Home, did I say? Heh, heheh, 
divil a much home I had! Didn’t the 
bailiffs knock the old house from under us 
and pile it in the ditch when I was scarce 
out of me cradle! Do you know the work 
I was doing when I was nine? Tell me 
now, do ye?” 

“No, sir.” 

“To be sure ye don’t. How could ye 
when ye do nothing but snivel all the time ? 
But I’ll tell ye the work I was doing. I’ll 
tell ye. Skinning cattle for John Carroll, 
the butcher, on O’Connell Street in 
Waterford City, is what I was doing.” 

“How do you skin cattle?” Bobby, his 
curiosity aroused, inquired. 

“Do tell us,” I added after catching a 
last, slow rolling tear from my cheek with 
my tongue. 

“Bedad, if ye must know, ye must know 


46 When I Was a Boy in Ireland 

and there’s nothing for it but to tell ye. 
Sit up here beside me,” he invited, 
slapping the red plush seat beside him 
so hard that he caused a miniature dust 
storm. 

Our journey from then on was of a 
pleasanter nature. Indeed, when we, at 
Gorey, said farewell to our new friend, 
we held an exalted opinion of cattle skin¬ 
ning, so entertaining had been his account 
of that profession. 

Following a three mile drive from the 
station over hilly, sylvan edged roads, we 
arrived at our school, named Mount Saint 
Benedict, in honor of the patron saint of 
the Benedictine Order. 

As we entered through the wrought 
iron gates and progressed the length of 
the slim, winding driveway, we were de¬ 
lighted with the pure, natural beauty of 
our surroundings. Stately old beech trees 
lined the drive, lending an air of dignity 


Mount Saint Benedict 47 

and age to the vast estate set in a horse¬ 
shoe of woods. We caught brief glimpses 
of the playing fields, enough to recognize 
a cricket pitch, golf-links, rugby pitch, 
tennis and handball courts and a riding 
ring. As we drew near a group of ivy 
embraced buildings that we rightly judged 
to be school buildings, a flock of water 
hens rose crying into the air, betraying 
an island studded lake gleaming golden in 
the setting sun. 

We were at once taken to the Dean who 
certainly did not add to the natural beauty 
by which he was surrounded, being an 
awkwardly tall man with cold, piercing 
eyes and crooked nose. When he spoke, 
his voice was the sound of waves beating 
on rocks. He quickly turned us over to 
Miss Keogh, the head matron, having first 
slapped our backs, however, and bellowed 
with laughter at our startled faces. 

The head matron told us we were to 
live in the junior house. Saint Aidan’s, and 


48 When I Was a Boy in Ireland 

took us there, leaving us with Miss Mc¬ 
Kenna, junior matron who bore a striking 
resemblance to a particularly cheerful 
robin I had once seen, so much so that 
I was always expecting her to chirp. 

We were allotted beds and lockers in a 
large dormitory whose only other furni¬ 
ture was a long narrow table laden with 
enamelled basins and jugs. 

Bobby and I were indignant on learn¬ 
ing we had to wash in cold water the year 
’round. 

“Of course,” Miss McKenna hastened 
to add, “you may take a bath twice a week 
and if you are early on the list of appli¬ 
cants you may get hot water then.” 

But we were never early on the list that 
first term. We were new boys. The 
worst and the last of everything was our 
unenviable lot. 

With what horror too, we learned we 
had to retire at eight o’clock and rise at 
six o’clock! A¥e wrote home immediately 


Mount Saint Benedict 49 

complaining of such tyranny. Alas, 
Mother and Father seemed to have lost 
all heart and replied that we were to be 
good boys and do as we were told. 

We soon became acquainted with our 
dormitory mates who, having learned our 
names, wished to know what our father 
was, how much money he had and if he 
owned and drove a motor car. We would, 
I suppose, have given ourselves great 
airs were it not that a Tramore boy was 
among those present. We had never met 
him before but we felt quite sure, knowing 
Tramore as we did, that he knew all 
about us. His name was Terence Smith 
and, having condescended to pinch me into 
wakefulness my first morning in chapel, 
I felt sure we were to be friends. The 
pinch was followed, after breakfast, with 
an invitation to join his gang, which I did 
blindly without inquiring whether he 
headed a band of would-be-murderers, 
thieves or political assassins. 


50 When I Was a Boy in Ireland 

Our classes commenced at nine o’clock 
each morning. Bobby and I were as¬ 
signed to the third form where we found 
several of our room mates, among them 
Terence Smith. Our classroom boasted 
a large open fireplace in which, it being 
autumn, a wood fire blazed cheerfully. 
The teacher sat by the fire while we shiv¬ 
ered in our desks. It was the knowing 
Terence who imparted, in rather a sibilant 
whisper, the knowledge that we had to 
gather the wood for the fire. I was aghast 
and openly rebellious but I was tamed— 
well tamed in time. 

At twelve o’clock we broke for lunch 
and recreation, starting lessons again at 
four o’clock. 

Every afternoon there was a list af¬ 
fixed to the bulletin board announcing the 
names of boys selected by the prefects to 
play rugby or cricket in season. One 
had no choice in the matter. If one’s name 
appeared on the list one had to play or 


Mount Saint Benedict 51 

report later in the day to the Dean who 
took down one’s trousers and administered 
at least six strokes of a holly stick to the 
tenderest portion of the anatomy. 

I learned, on that first afternoon, that 
one of the main objectives of Terence’s 
gang was to steer clear of games. They 
were considered a great waste of time. It 
was much more profitable to rob one of 
the orchards or to light fires in the woods 
or, better still, to burn the camps of enemy 
gangs. These camps were usually made 
of the spreading branches of pine trees 
and built, tepee fashion, close to the trunk 
of a tree. When the pine branches dried 
out, they made excellent fuel and burning 
an enemy camp was but the work of a 
few moments. 

My initiation into the gang terrified 
me. First, I had to cut my finger with a 
jackknife and write my name with blood 
in the gang book. Next, I was tied to a 
tree where, a fire being lit around me and 


52 When I Was a Boy in Ireland 

piled with green grass, I was smoked like 
a ham hanging in the chimney of our 
kitchen at home. Then I was sent to 
the Dean’s private orchard with strict 
instructions to return with none but rus¬ 
set apples. Fortunately, luck was with 
me and I accomplished the task without 
being caught. I became a fully fledged 
member of the gang and to my great de¬ 
light was made aide-de-camp to General 
Terence Smith who, like Mickey O’Brien, 
had eyes of tender innocence at the back 
of which lurked a carload of devilment. 

Bobby, I heard, had fared equally well 
with his initiation into a rival gang led by 
Jimmy Doyle, Terence’s, and therefore 
my, sworn enemy. Bobby and I, work¬ 
ing under our leaders’ banners, plotted 
each other’s ruin. We resorted to all 
sorts of moves, pillow fights, nettles and 
hairbrushes in beds, thumb tacks on desk 
seats, stink bombs, fisticuffs, ambushes and 
duels. The Irish rebellion of 1922, fer- 


Mount Saint Benedict 53 

meriting at the time was, we believed, a 
tame affair in comparison with our war¬ 
like activities. 

One afternoon I received permission to 
ride. Dandy, a broken winded, dapple- 
grey pony was my mount. While jog¬ 
ging around the riding ring I saw Jimmy 
Doyle, Bobby and several others ap¬ 
proaching. They spoke to me and pre¬ 
tended great interest in Dandy’s hind 
quarters. Too late I realized they had 
placed a piece of ginger beneath his tail. 

Poor Dandy never moved so fast in his 
life. I hung on as best I could until one 
of the stirrup leathers parted company 
with the saddle, unbalancing me and 
throwing me to the ground where I re¬ 
mained, some minutes, dazed. 

When I opened my eyes again I saw 
Dandy, in the distance, running across 
some fields. I rose and hobbled after 
him, not daring to return to the stables 
without him. 


54 When I Was a Boy in Ireland 

That night, shortly before bed time, I 
walked into the junior library, a large 
room, lined with book shelves, with French 
windows leading out onto a verandah. 
On the verandah I saw General Terence 
Smith, his coat off, his sleeves rolled up, 
in combat with Jimmy Doyle. Terence, 
I regret to say, was not getting the best 
of the battle by a long shot. 

“Why don’t you fight me, Jimmy 
Doyle?” I yelled excitedly, the afternoon’s 
debacle lingering in my mind. 

Everybody stood still and looked at 
me. Here, they thought, is something 
new. Buck wants to fight. 

Cries of, “Fight Buck, Doyle!” filled 
the air, leaving Doyle very little choice 
in the matter. 

General Smith retrieved his coat and 
quit the arena in my favor. 

For five minutes, perhaps more, I gave 
an excellent imitation of a punchbag 
bouncing before the fists of an experienced 


Mount Saint Benedict 55 

pugilist. I couldn’t land a blow and I 
was quivering with fear. What mad im¬ 
pulse had let me into it! What a fool I 
had been! But when things really did 
look black, Doyle hit me such a stinging 
punch on the chin that I lost my temper 
and with it my fear. Throwing caution to 
the winds, I sprang at my adversary, 
lashing out with right and left, not know¬ 
ing whether my punches were effective or 
not. Suddenly, there was no Jimmy 
Doyle to hit. He lay groaning on the 
floor, his nose bleeding, his lips cut and 
one eye very much puffed. The fight 
was over. 

Later, in bed, I spoiled my victory for 
myself, by crying myself to sleep without 
knowing why I cried. 

A proclamation issued next day from 
headquarters proclaimed me on equal 
footing with General Smith except in 
division of spoils over which he retained 
full control. 


56 When I Was a Boy in Ireland 

But what of lessons? What of those 
tortuous hours, tortuous for teacher and 
pupil alike, when we imbibed mental 
potions of French, Latin, Gaelic, Greek, 
Mathematics, History and Geography 
and Chemistry? What of them, indeed! 
Must I tell? Must I really tell? Oh, 
all right! I have forgotten them, all of 
them. 


CHAPTER FOUR 


REBELLION 

The history of Ireland is sad history 
over which in boyhood I many times cried. 
It is sad because for hundreds of years 
Ireland was looked upon by England’s 
kings as a vast and beautiful estate to be 
cut up and divided among their court 
favorites, and for as many years Eng¬ 
land’s kings looked upon the Irish people 
as slaves to serve their court favorites. 

But Ireland has a proud spirit, a spirit 
which never has nor ever will be broken. 
Time and time again down through the 
years, the people of Ireland have rebelled 
against British rule. Time and time 
again the people of Ireland have been on 
the verge of regaining their freedom but 

57 


% _ 

58 When I Was a Boy in Ireland 

always at the last something unforeseen 
has happened to spoil their plans. 

As a boy I lived through two such re¬ 
bellions. The first of these was the re¬ 
bellion of 1916. I barely recall it, being 
very young then. Mother and Father, 
of course, were interested in its every 
phase and I do recall their tears when they 
learned that Sir Roger Casement, on re¬ 
turning from the continent where he had 
made arrangements for the ammunition 
supply for the rebellion, had been ar¬ 
rested, taken to Britain and there exe¬ 
cuted as a traitor to the Crown. 

Despite Sir Roger Casement’s capture, 
however, the rebellion grew under the 
leadership of Padraic Pearse and in 
Easter week it broke out. It broke out 
in Dublin and was expected to spread 
throughout the length and breadth of the 
country. But it did not spread because 
the people were not united and because it 
did not spread, it failed. For England, 


Rehellion 


59 


engaged in war with Germany though she 
was, it was an easy matter to send soldiers 
to stifle the rebellion at its root in Dublin. 
The soldiers arrived. They cornered the 
‘‘rebels.” To prison they took them. 
Later they shot them. The names of the 
dead are forever engraved on every Irish 
heart. Among them are such valiant men 
as Thomas Clarke whose sons, Thomas 
and Emmet, were my schoolmates, Pad- 
raic Pearse and James Connolly, who, 
because of his wounds, had to be carried 
out from his cell and seated in a chair 
against the prison wall where he was shot 
to death. 

The rebellion of 1922 and the years of 
its growth, I recall more clearly. Little 
pictures of it flash before me like lantern 
slides, clear in every detail. I will put 
them into words for you. 

One morning at breakfast. Father read 
to us from the paper that England had 
opened her jails, clothed her convicts in 


60 When I Was a Boy in Ireland 

black uniforms and tan boots and then 
was shipping them to Ireland to terrorize 
us. 

“Now what do you know about that?” 
said Father, a hard look to his mouth. 

Several days later, I remember Father 
drawing up a list of the people in the 
house so that the “Black and Tans” when 
they raided us might compare it with the 
number of people on hand at the time. 
Well, we knew if more people were pres¬ 
ent and our explanation did not ring true, 
we would be shot even as others already 
had been shot, and our house burned to 
the ground. 

Bobby, Terence Smith and I left Wa¬ 
terford by train for Mount Saint Benedict. 
In the carriage with us was a venerable, 
white bearded, old man. He was very 
much frightened, never having been on a 
train before. We offered him some choc¬ 
olates. He thought we were trying to 
poison him and he would not take them. 


Rebellion 


61 


Two miles out of Waterford, the train 
pulled up short. Terence looked out of 
the window. 

“The ‘Irregulars’ are holding up the 
train,” he told us. The old man, more 
frightened than ever, tried to crawl un¬ 
der a seat. But he was too fat to get all 
the way under, so he asked us to place 
our feet on top of him, the way we would 
hide him. After a while, I went to the 
window and looked out. Something 
scratched my chin. A bayonet, it was, 
in the hands of an “Irregular.” 

“Take your face in out of that,” he 
ordered. I obeyed. From the luggage 
van, they took foodstuffs and then they 
ordered us along. 

We travelled to a junction where we 
were to change trains. As the train 
pulled into the platform, we noticed the 
platform crowded with “Irregulars.” 
They tossed our baggage out of the van, 
ordered us clear of the train and sprinkled 


62 When I Was a Boy in Ireland 

the carriages with petrol. A match was 
lit. You never saw such a blaze! 

By motor car, we finished our journey 
to Mount Saint Benedict where the 
Dean’s sympathies were all with the “Ir¬ 
regulars.” Because of this, the “Black 
and Tans” many times raided us, in search 
of ammunition and men on the run from 
them. Up the drive they would come 
in their big lorries and we feeling like 
killing them, every man jack of them. 
After they searched everybody and every 
place, they would go into the refectory 
and order a meal. They had very bad 
table manners. We saw them tossing 
joints of meat across the room to one an¬ 
other on their bayonets. Of course, they 
never left without prisoners. Once, they 
took Harry Doyle, the cobbler who cared 
for our shoes. We wondered what we 
would do when our shoes were worn out. 
Happy was the thought we might have 
to go barefooted. To go barefooted, to 
us, was a great thing. 


Rebellion 


63 


Oh, I remember one night at ‘‘prep,” 
that is, in the preparation room preparing 
our lessons for next day, when Bobby 
Coughlin held up his hand. 

“What ails you?” asked Kane Smith, 
the teacher in charge. 

“Please, sir, I just saw a hand at the 
window,” Bobby Coughlin said. You 
could have heard a dove’s breast feather 
floating to earth so great for a minute 
was the silence. A hand at the window! 
Was it a ghost? Or was it a “Black and 
Tan”? One was bad, the other was worse. 
Kane Smith turned very pale, he being 
of the “Irregulars” and wanted by the 
“Black and Tans.” 

“Who else laid eyes on it?” said he 
excitedly. 

“Please, sir, I did,” Paudeen Rogers, 
Bobby Coughlin’s deskmate admitted. 

“What window was it at, Coughlin?” 

“The window nearest to you, sir.” 

“What window did you see it at, Rog- 


64 When I Was a Boy in Ireland 

“The same, sir.’’ 

Then Kane Smith strode the length of 
the room to their desk. Suddenly he 
caught them and dragged them to the open 
floor and knocked their heads together 
good and hard. Neither Coughlin nor 
Rogers could see the window nearest him 
from where they sat. The whole thing 
was a cod. 

Came the good news. The flght was 
won. Ireland was a free state. That day 
there was no school at all all day. We 
went out on the hills and lit bonfires. 
The Dean ordered currant bread,—a 
great delicacy,—for tea. We cheered and 
we cheered and we cheered. We cheered 
and we hoarse from cheering. We cheered 
for Michael Collins the man De Valera 
appointed to beard the Welsh wizard, 
Lloyd George, in his den. We cheered 
for De Valera and we did not forget a 
cheer for poor Terence MacSweeney, Lord 
Mayor of Cork, who died for the cause. 







CHRISTCHURCH, DUBLIN 










ALONG THE COAST NEAR CORK 





Rebellion 65 

following a seventy odd days’ hunger 
strike. 

But the news which at first we thought 
good news, and we not knowing the terms 
of the agreement, really was bad news. 
A free state! Sure, the whole thing was 
a farce: the country divided against it¬ 
self, six counties staying lock, stock and 
barrel with England and the rest tied 
to England as firmly as it ever was ex¬ 
cept in name. 

“The whole thing was De Valera’s 
fault,” we said. “Why did not De Valera 
go to Lloyd George himself? Why send 
an inexperienced man like Michael Col¬ 
lins ? Great fighter and all though he was, 
he was no diplomat.” De Valera, “took it 
easy,” we said, “while the Welsh wizard 
walked rings ’round poor Michael Col¬ 
lins.” 

Poor Michael Collins, indeed! He was 
shot shortly and before we knew it Civil 
War was with us. 


66 When I Was a Boy in Ireland 

\ 

The parties who fought the civil war 
were the “Free Staters” who were satis¬ 
fied with what they got and the “Republi¬ 
cans” who wanted a republic or else 
nothing. 

This time the Dean’s sympathies were 
with the “Republicans” so of course, the 
“Free Staters” paid us a visit, and we 
grinding our teeth at them for traitors. 
Out of our warm beds, they roused us in 
the early morning. They searched our 
lockers, throwing our clothes on the floor, 
they searched under our mattresses, find¬ 
ing nothing but forbidden detective 
stories, and they even searched the water 
jugs. For what they searched, I don’t 
know. If it was ammunition, wasn’t it all 
well buried in the woods! Outside they 
had a Lewis gun trained on the house. 
Miss Keogh, the head matron, lost her 
temper about it. She went out to the 
captain and said: “Take that stupid toy 
away,” meaning the gun. 


Rebellion 


67 


“Faith, we will, Mam, and you along 
with it,” said the captain. 

When they left, sure enough they took 
Miss Keogh. They took her and put her 
in Kilmainham jail in Dublin. For a 
few days Miss Keogh sat patient and 
ladylike, thinking she soon would be re¬ 
leased because nothing was known against 
her. When at the end of a few days they 
did not release her, and refused to say 
when they would, why. Miss Keogh just 
waylaid the jailer, tapped him on the 
head with his keys, took his clothes and 
walked out onto the street. Next morn¬ 
ing she breakfasted at Mount Saint Ben¬ 
edict after riding half the night on a bor¬ 
rowed green bicycle to get there. 

About that time a newspaper was 
started in Mount Saint Benedict. “The 
Daily Stinker,” it was called. It was 
written in ink, illustrated and distributed 
on the “Q.T.” The first issue contained 
war news and a full page caricature of 


68 When I Was a Boy in Ireland 

the Dean fighting the entire Free State 
Army with one arm tied behind his back. 
The issue was captured by a vigilant 
teacher. In it he read the names of the 
editors and he sent them and “The Daily 
Stinker” to the Dean. 

“This paper must be suppressed,” the 
Dean said. 

“All right, Father. Thank you. 
Father,” Terence Smith and I said. 

One day had “The Daily Stinker” been 
out of business, when Gorey, the town 
three miles distant from our school, was 
besieged. We were in Latin class when 
we heard the machine guns begin sending 
their messages of death. One of us 
was declining mensa. “iVIensa,—rat- 
tat. Mensa, rat-tat. INIensam, ratta- 
tatta-tat. Mensae, rat-tat. JNIensae, rat- 
tat. Mensa, rata-tatta-tatta-tat. . . .” 

“That will do,” the teacher said. 

For the remainder of the day we lis¬ 
tened to the firing, wondering what was 


Rehellion 


69 


happening, wondering to whom the battle 
would go. At bed time the report came: 
“Gorey has been taken by the Republi¬ 
cans.” How we cheered! 

And still the fighting went on. Great 
men died on both sides. Father fought 
against son, brother against brother, 
cousin against cousin, friend against one 
time friend. At last in an attempt to 
stop the flow of blood, the Catholic Church 
intervened. The Republicans were ex¬ 
communicated and preached against. It 
was the beginning of the end. The Free 
State was with bad grace accepted. The 
Republicans were crushed for the time 
being. Cosgrove was elected president. 
Quiet gradually fell on the land. Mount 
Saint Benedict was condemned by the 
new government as a bed of political 
unrest. It closed its doors. We went 
home. 


CHAPTER FIVE 


“the pleasant waters of the 

RIVER lee” 

I SAT in a railway carriage, listening 
to the conversation of three fellow travel¬ 
lers. They were, I gathered, on their 
way to a race meeting. Yours Only, they 
agreed, was a “dead cert” for the first 
race. “Wasn’t he only beaten a nose at 
the Curragh and isn’t he up against a 
handful of three legged jackasses this 
day?” 

INIy own destination was Cork City 
where Terence Smith had gone to live 
some months before and it was to visit 
with him, I had undertaken my journey. 

The racing enthusiasts, having forecast 
the fate of five other horses, settled down 
to a game of cards while I pressed my 

70 


The Waters of the River Lee 71 

snub nose to the window and gazed upon 
the country which was new to me since 
I had not passed that way before. 

“If there has ever been a ‘smiling val¬ 
ley,’ ” thought I to myself, “this is it.” 

How can I portray those emerald green 
fields, those whitewashed cottages with 
their yellow thatched roofs of straw and 
rough stone chimneys pouring forth deli¬ 
cate, blue, transparent, turf smoke ? Why 
am I not able to transplant to these pages 
the garden patches, and show to you, it 
being the spring of the year, the prim¬ 
roses, the bluebells and the daisies, the 
men sowing the potato crop, the children 
harrowing the land and the women hang¬ 
ing out their varied colored wash or stand¬ 
ing pensively, babe in arms, at their 
kitchen doors? And in contrast to those 
scenes, how am I to convey the feeling of 
awe that filled me, when, from the train 
window, I saw Lismore Castle rising 
steeply above the river Blackwater, its 


72 When I Was a Boy in Ireland 

brown stone turrets frowning on the pass¬ 
ing of our puny train? 

It is a task beyond me, a task for the 
pen of a great poet, a task for the pen of a 
William Butler Yeats. 

At JNIallow, it was necessary for me to 
change trains. While waiting for my 
connection, I watched my travelling com¬ 
panions hire a jaunting car and drive 
away, presumably in the direction of Mal¬ 
low race course. 

The remainder of my journey was with¬ 
out particular incident save when the train 
to which I transferred started off in the 
direction from which I had come, filling 
me with feelings, half of anger and half 
of dismay. Had I boarded the wrong 
train? No, thank Heaven! It later cir¬ 
cled around towards Cork. 

Terence, accompanied by his younger 
brothers, Jim and Walter, met me at the 
station. Why it should have been, I do 
not know, but we were a little shy of each 


The Waters of the River Lee 73 

other at first. This feeling dispelled it¬ 
self, however, when, on entering a tram 
car, we found ourselves seated opposite 
a gargantuan female whose fat over¬ 
lapped the seat on which she sat. Rude 
little boys that we undoubtedly were, 
we stared, amazed at her for a moment 
before giving way to our uncontrollable 
mirth. 

The tram swayed along Western Road, 
to Sunview, Terence’s home, where we 
alighted in the best possible spirits. El¬ 
len, the maid, whom I remembered hav¬ 
ing met in Tramore, answered the door, 
her usually severe face parted in a wel¬ 
coming smile. Mrs. Smith received me 
graciously, as became one of the most 
gracious ladies it has been my good for¬ 
tune to meet. Terence’s father, I learned, 
was away on a voyage, captaining an 
ocean liner. 

It started to rain shortly after my ar¬ 
rival and, as I remember it, we spent the 


74 When I Was a Boy in Ireland 

day in the playroom putting on a play 
for which we charged Mrs. Smith and 
Ellen sixpence admission fee. 

The following day, Terence showed me 
the city and took me, afterwards, to 
visit Desmond O’Leary, a schoolmate at 
INIount Saint Benedict. 

Cork, I must liken to a diamond set in 
an unclean setting, since that is the simile 
that suggests itself to me. 

I cannot recall the names of the prin¬ 
cipal thoroughfares but they impressed 
me with their cleanliness. The fa 9 ades 
of the low buildings were scrubbed to 
dazzling whiteness or being scrubbed. 
The footpaths were as the floor of our 
kitchen at home after its daily washing; 
fit to eat from. The shop windows were 
so highly polished, it seemed they were 
not present at all and that one could 
reach past them to the merchandise they 
protected. 

As the main streets impressed me with 


The Waters of the River Lee 75 

their cleanliness, so the side and back 
streets impressed me with their dirtiness. 
There on those narrow, twisted, garbage 
littered streets, lanes and alley ways, over¬ 
crowded with cheap tenements whose 
broken windows were patched with rags, 
cardboard and paper, we saw dirty chil¬ 
dren, nigh to nakedness, reviling one an¬ 
other as they played ball with a ball of 
torn stockings tied together with string. 
Women of shawl, who in Ireland are 
called “shawlies,” loitered in dark door¬ 
ways, their fringed, blanket-like shawls 
swinging loosely from their sloping shoul¬ 
ders while men—the ruins of what once 
were men—tottered or stumbled from evil 
smelling public houses, intent on beating 
their wives and other unfortunates who 
crossed their path. 

Our way to the home of Desmond 
O’Leary, our school chum, took us over the 
River Lee whose praisies have been sung 



76 When I Was a Boy in Ireland 

by Reverend Francis Mahoney, author of 
the Front Papers^ in his rhythmic lyric, 
“The Bells of Shandon,” which I take the 
liberty of quoting here because it was the 
first lyric I learned of my own free will 
when I was a boy in Ireland— 

With deep affection and recollection 
I often think of Shandon bells. 

Whose sounds so wild would, in days of child¬ 
hood. 

Fling round my cradle their magic spells— 

On this I ponder, where’er I wander, 

And thus grow fonder, sweet Cork, of thee; 
With thy bells of Shandon, 

That sound so grand on 
The pleasant waters of the river Lee. 

I have heard bells chiming full many a clime in. 
Tolling sublime in cathedral shrine; 

While at a glib rate brass tongues would vi¬ 
brate. 

But all their music spoke nought to thine; 
For memory dwelling on each proud swelling 
Of thy belfrey knelling its bold notes free, 
Made the bells of Shandon 



The Waters of the River Lee 77 

Sound far more grand on 
The pleasant waters of the river Lee. 

I have heard bells tolling ‘‘old Adrian’s” mole 
in, 

Their thunder rolling from the Vatican, 
With cymbals glorious, swinging uproarious 
In the gorgeous turrets of Notre Dame; 

But thy sounds were sweeter than the dome of 
Saint Peter 

Flings o’er the Tiber, pealing solemnly. 

O! the bells of Shandon 
Sound far more grand on 
The pleasant waters of the river Lee. 

There’s a bell in Moscow, while on tower and 
Kiosko 

In St. Sophia the Turkman gets. 

And loud in air, calls men to prayer. 

From the tapering summit of tall minarets. 
Such empty phantom, I freely grant them. 
But there’s an anthem more dear to me, 

It’s the Bells of Shandon, 

That sound so grand on 
The pleasant waters of the river Lee. 

Reverend Francis Mahoney 


78 When 1 Was a Boy in Ireland 

We knocked with a highly polished 
brass knocker on Desmond O’Leary’s 
freshly painted, deep green front door. 
A footman, moving quietly over deep 
carpets, admitted us. We inquired for 
Desmond. 

‘‘I shall see if Master Desmond is re¬ 
ceiving today,” said the footman. Ter¬ 
ence and I, waiting in the hallway, flashed 
one another a look that boded ill for 
Master Desmond. The footman re¬ 
turned: “Master Desmond will see you. 
This way, please.” 

We followed that automaton disguised 
as a man, to a large, richly furnished 
drawing room. Master Desmond, who 
had been sitting—would it seem unkind 
if I said, lolling?—in an armchair before 
a cheerful, red, coal fire, rose to greet us. 
As he stepped forward, he gracefully 
avoided quite the largest box of choco¬ 
lates, I had ever seen, lying carelessly on 
the hearth rug. 



The Waters of the River Lee 79 

“So glad to see you, boys!” The words 
dropped from his lips like hot-house 
grapes falling on cushioned ground. 

“And we you, Master Desmond,” we 
made sarcastic obeisance. 

“What on earth are you doing in 
town?” inquired our blase friend, accept¬ 
ing our homage, refusing the sarcasm 
that went with it. 

“I’m visiting with Terence,” I answered 
grimly. 

“Does Terence live in this beastly 
city?” He feigned surprise, addressing 
his remark to no one in particular. No¬ 
body in particular answered him. It had 
become too much for us. Terence and I 
again caught one another’s eye and forth¬ 
with burst into raucous laughter. The 
remainder of our visit was decidedly un¬ 
comfortable, we visitors being terribly 
busy planning a suitable revenge when 
Master Desmond returned to school the 
following term. 


80 When I Was a Boy in Ireland 

“Boys, why don’t you take Alan to 
see Blarney Castle, this lovely day?” Mrs. 
Smith suggested at the breakfast table 
on the last day of my visit. 

Enthusiastic approval greeted the pro¬ 
posal. 

After breakfast, we donned overcoats 
and scarfs, for although the Spring sun¬ 
shine was caressing the streets of Cork, 
a cold breeze interfered between them as 
if jealous of their union. 

Where we went to catch the train to 
Blarney, I do not know, but I have a vivid 
recollection of riding through the streets 
of Cork in a ridiculously small train that 
seemed to radiate happiness and good 
cheer, particularly when the engine driver 
tooted the little whistle. I can recall 
waving at pedestrians and hearing one 
of them call after us: “Give it a kiss 
for me,” meaning the Blarney Stone, no 
doubt. 

Blarney Castle! We paused at the en- 



ST. PATRICK’S STREET, CORK 














ST. ITNBARRF/S CATHEDRAL, CORK 






The Waters of the River Lee 81 

trance to pay a small admission fee and 
to wait for the caretaker to escort us 
through the castle. Looking at it, from 
where we stood, we could not help ad¬ 
miring its silent beauty. The massive 
old trees at its base seemed to say: 
“You’ve got to pass me to lay hand on 
her.” They were her bodyguard, the 
bodyguard of this famous castle built 
by Cormac MacCarthy in 1446, which, 
although I knew I was committing a 
sacrilege in permitting the thought, re¬ 
minded me of pictures I had seen of Queen 
Victoria. It had, for me, her air of fierce 
determination. 

“Yewantoseethecastle?” The caretaker, 
running his words together in that sing 
song voice peculiar to Cork people and 
rising to a crescendo on the last syllable, 
inquired. 

“Yes, please.” Terence signified that 
such was our intention. 

Together with the keeper, we walked 


82 When I Was a Boy in h^eland 

up the drive and soon with the aid of 
a key of gigantic proportions, were in¬ 
side. 

Of our journey to the turrets, I am 
forgetful. But stay—I do remember the 
keeper, while we were climbing some stone 
steps, tapping the walls and saying: “You 
wouldn’t be after thinking they were 
eighteen foot thick, would ye now?” 

Who, having stood atop Blarney Cas¬ 
tle and looked far out on the countryside 
could forget the purple haze lingering 
over the fields, the bleating of sheep car¬ 
ried on the breeze, the cows, like ants in 
the distance, nibbling the lush green grass 
to their hearts’ content? And who could 
help, looking down from above, wonder¬ 
ing what had happened to the bodyguard 
of massive trees that seemed but little 
more than shrubs and to the keeper’s 
cottage a short distance away that looked 
like a mushroom under which the fairies. 



The Waters of the River Lee 83 

at midnight made merry. Oh Blarney! 
Beautiful Blarney! 

Kissing the Blarney Stone was, for 
me, a frightening experience. Always, 
I have been upset looking down from on 
high, and when I tell you that to obtain 
the gift of a nimble tongue, I was let 
down through an iron grill over a yawn¬ 
ing chasm of space to touch with my lips 
the famous stone underlying a turret 
ridge, you may have an inkling of how 
I felt. No, I would not repeat the un¬ 
dignified experience. You kiss the Blar¬ 
ney Stone. Let me gaze my fill at the 
view, my feet planted firmly on the stone 
terrace beneath them. 

The following day, I entrained for 
home. My holiday was over. How I 
had enjoyed it! Thank you, once again, 
Mrs. Smith! Thank you, Terence, Jim 
and Walter and thank you too, Ellen 


84 When I Was a Boy in Ireland 

who helped make my stay pleasanter by 
refraining from reporting the bedroom 
you found, one morning, filled with feath¬ 
ers, following an exciting pillow fight of 
the night before in which I was hopelessly 
vanquished. 


CHAPTER SIX 


DAOINE SIDHE 

or 

THE FAIRY PEOPLE 

Laugh, if you will, but you will not 
shake my belief in the daoine sidhe^ the 
fairy people. I was brought up to be¬ 
lieve in them. Mother told me they 
danced around my cradle the day I was 
born and it was all she could do to keep 
them from stealing me and substituting 
a foundling in my place. 

Did I not, with my own two ears, hear 
the keening of the ban sidlie^ summoning 
a soul to Tir-na-n-og, the Land of Youth 
where happiness grows on trees and is to 
be had for the picking? 

Was I not present when the daoine 

85 


86 When I Was a Boy in Ireland 

sidhe threw stones at my uncle’s farm¬ 
house in Offaly because the chimney had 
been cleaned with a branch of holly which 
the fairy people always consider “a gentle 
tree”? 

Do you doubt my word? If you do it 
were well you skip this chapter. It tells 
of fairies and suchlike. But before you 
go, let me tell you, it is because of your 
disbelief, the fairies have dwindled in size, 
being no bigger than a hand span the last 
time I saw them. 

Go now, and may God and all His 
holy angels protect you from the wrath 
of the daoine sidhe! 

Closeby our house, in the three acre 
field facing the road to be exact, there 
was a fairy ring, a dark circular patch of 
grass, we never passed without murmur¬ 
ing: “God be with you. Good People!” 

How did we know it was a fairy ring? 
Did we not leave a saucer of milk by it 


87 


The Fairy People 

every night that we might win the good 
will of the Good People and was not the 
saucer empty every morning? Indeed, 
it was. Aye, and we heard music, such 
music as has seldom been heard by hu¬ 
man ears, coming from the spot many a 
night. And that is not all. Horses and 
cattle grazing the field would not go near 
the “ring” although it grew the sweetest 
grass for miles around. 

Oh, I could tell you more of that “ring” 
but it is not wise to betray fairy secrets 
and although I am far away from my 
native heath, my respect is as great for 
the daoine sidhe as if I lived among them. 

There was an elderly woman who vis¬ 
ited Tramore every summer. We boys 
called her Mad Mary from Tipperary, 
though we were not sure she came from 
there at all. 

Mad Mary had formed the habit of 
visiting my father’s friends, Mr. and Mrs. 


88 When I Was a Boy in Ireland 

Quade and their aunt, Miss Keneally, 
who owned the Victoria Hotel on Queen 
Street and it was there that I heard Mad 
Mary converse with the fairies. 

“Away with ye now, and leave a poor 
body in peace,” she commanded an invis¬ 
ible annoyance in the middle of a conversa¬ 
tion, we had been having about the fairy 
people. “They’re afraid. I’ll tell you 
too much, alanna/' she explained apolo¬ 
getically. 

“Who are they?” I made bold to ask. 

But Mad Mary never answered my 
question. Up, she sprang from her chair, 
protesting frantically, “Let me be! Let 
me be, I beg of ye! I’ll not say a word 
that’s not a good word of ye! Let me be! 
Let . . .” She whisked past me out of 
the room as if she were being pushed from 
it by unseen forces. 

I mentioned the incident to Miss Ke¬ 
neally who shook her head sorrowfully. 
“We’ll not see poor Mary for three days 


The Fairy People 89 

or more,” she forecast. And it was so. 
Nobody could tell where she disappeared 
to and people, in time, ceased to bother 
her with questions because there was a 
light in her eyes that was not a human 
light. 

The ban sidhe, meaning the fairy 
woman, is an unwelcome but greatly re¬ 
spected visitor at the houses of those over 
whose destinies she chooses to preside. It 
is said of her that she only visits those 
whose names are preceded by an “O” or 
a “Mac”; such people being descendants 
of the earliest settlers in Ireland—some 
of them, indeed, claim kings and queens 
for ancestors. 

I heard the ban sidhe when Seamus 
O’Dougherty lay dying. 

Seamus, a friendly neighbor, had in¬ 
jured his spine falling from a horse. The 
doctor said he would recover. But I 
was with Seamus in his bedroom when we 


90 When I Was a Boy in Ireland 

both heard a low, whining sob at the win¬ 
dow. 

“It’s a baby crying! Who can it.be?” 
I exclaimed. Seamus held up his hand, 
bidding me be quiet. 

“It’s no baby crying,” he said, and I 
noticed his face was deathly pale. The 
cry increased in pitch. It became a keen, 
a wail, a wail of anguish, the wail of a 
broken heart. Frightened, terribly fright¬ 
ened, I clutched Seamus’ hand. “Don’t 
you fret, a mic. It’s for me she is keen¬ 
ing.” 

Then I knew I had heard the ban sidhe. 
Silently, I left the room. 

Seamus’ mother looked up at me from 
her seat by the hearth as I crossed the 
kitchen. “She’ll come for him tonight,” 
she prophesied. 

What madness possessed me, I do not 
know. Usually, I am a timid soul, and 
I have confessed I was frightened in 
Seamus’ bedroom, but when I left the 


91 


The Fairy People 

house, I walked by the window where 
the ban sidhe had keened. There, on the 
ground, I found a comb, the comb of 
the ban sidhe; for it is well known that 
the ban sidhe, even when keening, is for¬ 
ever combing the tangles from her ankle 
length hair. I picked up the comb and 
took it home. 

Only once has my mother lost her tem¬ 
per with me and slapped me. It was on 
that occasion. Striking me a sharp blow 
in the face: “Take that comb to the fairy 
ring,” she commanded. 

In the morning, it was gone and the 
drawn blinds and the black crepe on the 
door at O’Dougherty’s house told us 
Seamus was gone—gone to Tir-na-n-og. 

The daoine sidhe celebrate three festi¬ 
vals during the year. As we have our 
Christmas, New Year and Easter, they 
have their November Eve, May Eve and 
Midsummer Eve. 



92 When I Was a Boy in Ireland 

I learned something of these festivals 
one Halloween night sitting around a log 
fire with a group of schoolchums, listen¬ 
ing to the stories that fell from the lips 
of Mr. Griffith, our history teacher at 
Mount Saint Benedict. 

On November Eve, he would have it, 
the daoine sidhe are particularly sad for 
on that night they open the graves of 
the dead and dance with ghosts on grave¬ 
yard tombstones. They endeavor on this 
night, above all other nights, to capture a 
mortal musician and have him play for 
them. 

It is on November Eve, also, the Puca, 
a very famous fairy, comes down from 
the mountains, putting his curse on the 
blackberries, rendering them unfit to eat 
after that date. 

The Puca comes in various forms; some¬ 
times as a donkey, sometimes a horse, 
sometimes an eagle, but whatever his 
shape or form, if kindly spoken to, the 


93 


The Fairy People 

Puca will answer all manner of impor¬ 
tant questions concerning happenings of 
the coming year. 

May Eve, Mr. Griffith told us, is a day 
devoted by the fairy people to pugilistic 
combat, especially every seventh year 
when they fight among themselves for the 
crops, taking as their spoil the finest ears 
of wheat, barley and oats. With the 
barley and with dew gathered from a 
mountain top at midnight they make a 
potent liquor, one drink of which is suf¬ 
ficient to set them to dancing for twenty- 
four hours without pausing to catch 
breath. 

You did not know the fairy people were 
such great dancers, did you? Oh, yes 
indeed they are! They keep the lepra- 
caun, their cobbler and only one among 
them that ever does a stroke of work, 
busy making new shoes for them, because 
they wear them out so quickly at their 
dances. 


94 When I Was a Boy in Ireland 

Midsummer Eve finds the daoine sidhe 
at their merriest. Mr. Griffith warned us 
that if we ever grew up to have a beautiful 
daughter, we were to be sure and keep 
her indoors on Midsummer Eve because 
that is when the daoine sidhe steal, for 
themselves, beautiful mortal brides. 

He knew of a girl who had been so 
treated. She disappeared for seven years 
and when she came back, her feet were 
worn off from dancing, she was as ugly 
as an ugly duckling and she roamed about 
the countryside on crutches the rest of her 
mortal days, muttering, “At your service 
M’lord. At your service!” 

Mike O’Dermody, a travelling tinker 
man, showed up at our house one day, 
offering his tinware for sale, which, as 
you may have heard, is the way tinkers 
make a living when they are not stealing 
horses, chickens and donkeys. Shortly 
after Mike’s visit, I had occasion to go 


95 


The Fairy People 

to the hen house to collect the eggs and 
there, I found Mike with two of our hens 
stuffed under his coat, just about to make 
his departure. “Don’t tell your father, 
sweet mister,” he pleaded. 

Now, it had been rumored that this 
tinker man had had an experience with 
the fairies but what it was he had never 
been known to tell, fearing that he would 
be humiliated and looked down upon. I 
seized my opportunity. 

“Tell what the fairies did to you and I 
will not tell on you,” I bargained. After 
a great deal of hemming and hawing he 
agreed and it is fortunate that he set no 
seal on my lips for I am now able to tell 
you about it and a most extraordinary 
story it is. 

Mike had stolen a chicken from a herb 
woman and friend of the daoine sidhe^ 
named Anty Burns. He had but digested 
the delicate and tender bird when the fairy 
people laid hands on him, reduced him in 


96 When I Was a Boy in Ireland 

size and transported him astride a will-o- 
the-wisp to a “ring” not far from the home 
of the herb woman, three miles north of 
Thurles town in the county Tipperary. 

There, in secret chambers, under¬ 
ground, Mike was tried by the fairy court 
for the crime he had committed. Al¬ 
though his guilt was common knowledge, 
he received a fair and honest trial. 

The jury, without retiring, rendered a 
verdict of guilty and then the judge, a 
wee bit of a fairy, dressed in flowing green 
robes and sporting a curled peruke, pro¬ 
nounced sentence: 

“Mike O’Dermody,” said he, “it is my 
bounden and pleasurable duty to sentence 
you, to sentence you to the hatching of 
an egg and to raise the chicken thus 
hatched until it resembles, in size and deli¬ 
cacy, the chicken you stole from our good 
friend the herb woman.” 

Poor Mike was bewildered. Never had 
he heard of such treatment accorded to 


97 


The Fairy People 

living mortal before. Think what his 
brethren, encamped, at that very moment 
under the tilted, tribal carts not a handful 
of miles away, would say if they heard 
tell of it! But his spirit did not break 
entirely until the entire aggregation of 
fairies, after the verdict was pronounced, 
rose to their feet and sang— 

“Haha, haha, ha, ha, ha! 

He’s going to hatch an egg. 

And before he’s done, he’ll beg 
Ripe corn meal and oats to eat. 

And be sitting on his feet. 

Haha, haha, ha, ha, ha!” 

Little did Mike think that the words 
of the song were an accurate forecast of 
the treatment he was to receive. But he 
was not long finding out. No, indeed! 

The first meal served up to him in his 
strange and novel capacity of setting hen 
was a handful of corn meal and a hand¬ 
ful of oats, at which he was forced to 



98 When I Was a Boy in Ireland 

peck, because of the egg beneath him 
that cried, it was catching its death of 
cold, if he rose as much as half an inch 
from it. 

In due course Mike hatched the egg and 
likewise in due course it grew as pre¬ 
scribed by the law. JNIike was then 
strapped to the back of his offspring 
and sent flying to the house of Anty Burns. 

Mike and the chicken entered the herb 
woman’s house by way of the chimney. 
The herbwoman was seated by the fire 
and as they came tumbling down, she 
spread open her black calico apron and 
caught them in it, saving them from the 
fire. 

‘T’ve got you at last, Mike O’Dermody, 
bad scran to your thieving hide,” the herb- 
woman screamed. 

"'Arra, come now, Anty dear, it’s too 
hard you do be leaning on a poor but 
honest man,” jNIike defended himself. 

“Aye, you red headed rascal, as hon- 


99 


The Fairy People 

est as a jackdaw in a box of silver,” be¬ 
littled the herbwoman. 

Mike, never a diplomat, chose that un¬ 
fortunate moment to beg Anty to restore 
him to his mortal size, for he was still no 
bigger than a fairy. 

‘‘Mortal size, is it?” Anty snorted with 
anger. “I’ll not restore you to your mor¬ 
tal size, my fine bucko. I’m going to 
boil you in the herb pot and use the juice 
that comes from your ugly bones to wash 
the cow’s udder clear of ticks.” 

“God bless us and save us, you wouldn’t 
be after doing that, would you, Anty?” 
Mike pleaded for his life and as he 
pleaded, inspiration came to him. “Anty,” 
he cried, “if you’ll only let me free. I’ll 
make you a whole set of tin pots. Think 
of it, Anty, a whole set of shiny, new, 
tin pots.” 

“Begad,” said Anty, scratching her old 
grey pate, “it’s a set of pots, I do be 
needing right badly but, heed you well. 


100 When I Was a Boy in Ireland 

Mike O’Dermody, tinker man, if you ever 
steal as much as a halfpenny’s worth of 
snuff from Anty Burns in time to come, 
I’ll have your life from you, you low liv¬ 
ing, crawling, roofless, dirty, sneaking, 
night prowling, chicken stealing, conniv¬ 
ing, useless good-for-nothing, black beast 
of a drunken horse thief!” 

‘‘God bless you for a fine woman, 
Anty,” ejaculated Mike, vastly relieved. 

As I have mentioned earlier in this 
chapter, I have a great respect for the 
fairy people; if therefore, this story, told 
to me by Mike O’Dermody, be untrue, 
I apologise to the fairy people and to the 
printer of this little book, whose press, if 
it be untrue, they will surely smash to 
smithereens. 


CHAPTER SEVEN 


A VISIT TO ROSCREA AND TO BIRR 

“Bob and Al!” Father’s voice, serious 
in tone, reached us from the dining room. 

“Coming, Father!” 

Bobby and I walked into the room, 
nervously wondering which of our many 
sins had been discovered. 

“Boys, I have something important to 
say to you.” 

“What is it. Father?” 

“Mother is dangerously ill as you know 
and the doctor says we must have quiet in 
the house if she is to recover.” 

“We’ll be quiet; quiet as mice.” 

“That won’t be necessary, boys. You 
see, I have arranged for you to spend a 
month with your Uncle Eddy ...” 


101 


102 When I Was a Boy in Ireland 

“Mother won’t die while we’re away, 
will she, Father?” I interrupted. 

“Of course not. What nonsense you 
talk!” 

“When are you sending us away, 
Father?” Bobby asked. 

“Tomorrow. You’ll stop over tomor¬ 
row night with your Aunt Rita at Ros- 
crea and the following day go to your 
uncle’s.” 

“All right. Father. Whatever you 
say.” 

“And mind you, if I hear any bad re¬ 
ports . . . well, . . .” Father cast an 
eye that finished his sentence at a hunt¬ 
ing crop, hanging beneath the auto¬ 
graphed picture of his friend, Danny 
Maher, famous American jockey. 

“I’ll see that A1 behaves himself. 
Father,” volunteered my elder, Bobby. 

“Have an eye to your own conduct as 
well, young man,” Father advised, tak- 


A Visit to Roscrea and to Birr 103 

ing Bobby down a peg much to my de¬ 
light. 

Aunt Rita met us at the railway sta¬ 
tion at Roscrea, which is the town far¬ 
thest north in the County Tipperary. It 
was early afternoon when we arrived. 
To amuse us Aunt Rita took us to see 
the town and some of its famous land¬ 
marks. 

We first visited the round tower. This 
tower stands near the famous abbey of 
ancient times founded by Saint Cronan. 
It stands about eighty feet high and al¬ 
though badly in need of repair is very 
beautiful to look upon. With Aunt Rita’s 
help, Bobby and I climbed up to a win¬ 
dow about ten feet above the ground. On 
one side of the window at about the half¬ 
way mark in its height we saw carved in 
relief a one masted ship. On the oppo¬ 
site side we saw also carved in relief a 


104 When I Was a Boy in Ireland 

funny looking cross. Aunt Rita told us 
that the figure of the ship proved the 
tower to be of very ancient origin because 
that type of ship was the emblem of Una 
of the Pagan Irish. What the cross 
meant she could not tell us. 

Next Aunt Rita took us to see Saint 
Cronan’s new church. The church built 
by Saint Cronan himself near the round 
tower is now only ruins and the people of 
Roscrea built the new church for the saint, 
he being their patron. About all I can 
remember of the new church is its situa¬ 
tion and that is a beautiful memorv. A 
little river, named the Brusna, flows 
nearby, hawthorne trees grace its banks, 
green fields wind up from it to the church 
and on the hill above stands the Convent 
of the Sacred Heart where mother went 
to school as a little girl. 

We visited this convent and the nuns 
were very nice to us. They said I was 
the image of my mother and I felt very 


A Visit to Roscrea and to Birr 105 

proud and said I would save up what 
they said to tell Mother when I went 
home. Then they served tea for us and 
we ate with our tea some delicious biscuits 
covered with hard, pink icing; to think 
of them makes my mouth water even now. 

In harsh contrast to the round tower, 
the church and the convent was the place 
we next visited, but it was every bit as 
interesting and Bobby and I enjoyed our¬ 
selves hugely. What place was it? It 
was the bacon factory. Boscrea’s famous 
bacon factory. Mr. Owen, manager of 
the factory and friend of Aunt Rita’s 
undertook to show us how pigs were 
“killed and cured.” It seemed strange 
to us, pigs should be killed before being 
cured but, Mr. Owen chuckling at our 
surprised faces, explained that curing 
pigs meant preserving them. 

We began our tour in the stockyards 
where the odor was none too pleasant and 
the pigs grunted and rooted in their sties 


106 When I Was a Boy in Ireland 

ignorant of what fate had in store for 
them. 

From the stockyards we went inside 
the factory and we saw the iron bar along 
which the dead pigs were passed to the 
furnace high above the ground. In the 
furnace they were singed. Then they 
were dropped down into a trough of 
water on the ground below. A man, 
wielding a knife shaped like a cutlass, 
stood by the trough and scraped and 
washed and passed the pigs to a butcher 
who cleaved and cleaned accurately and 
with great speed until the very pigs we 
had seen rooting and grunting in their 
sties a scant thirty minutes before were 
reduced to so many sides, so many heads, 
so many feet and so many sausages to be 
shipped to lovers of Irish bacon the world 
over. 

As we left the factory, INIr. Owen gave 
us some pigs’ bladders which we inflated 
and which we carried with us as we would 


A Visit to Roscrea and to Birr 107 

toy balloons. So ended our tour of Ros¬ 
crea. 

We slept that night on a feather mat¬ 
tress in a curtained, four poster bed that 
we had to climb up to on a ladder of car¬ 
peted steps. What a bed for a pillow 
fight! But we were asleep, exhausted by 
the day’s excitement, before Aunt Rita 
blew out the candles and kissed us good 
night. 

The following morning our uncle drove 
over from Birr, nine miles away in the 
county of Offaly, where we returned 
with him later in the day. 

It was difficult for us to reconcile our¬ 
selves to the sudden and drastic change of 
scenery, we experienced driving from Tip¬ 
perary into Offaly. On the road out from 
Roscrea, we passed verdant pastures, 
tilled fields boasting fat and bursting 
crops and flower gardens and orchards 
no less content, and healthy. 

Then, a battered, wooden, worm eaten 


108 When I Was a Boy in Ireland 

and moss overgrown sign on which the 
name Offaly was faintly discernible 
flashed by us, and suddenly, without warn¬ 
ing, we came upon stark, bleak country¬ 
side. Where there had been succulent 
grasses waving in the breeze now were 
barren, rock strewn fields. Low lying, 
tilled plains gave way to harsh, forbidding 
hills while gardens and orchards disap¬ 
peared into bogs and wasteland. 

We had passed from “contented land” 
to “mean land” that had, constantly, to 
be reminded of the power of man and 
even then responded but poorly. 

Birr! Oh, what a story I could tell of 
Birr had I lived there in the third cen¬ 
tury when Cormac, son of Cond of the 
Hundred Battles fought the people of 
Munster or in the twelfth century when 
Thorlogh, son of Roderick O’Connor, 
king of Ireland, laid siege to the warlike 
clan of the O’Carrols! But I was a boy 




A Visit to Roscrea and to Birr 109 

of the twentieth century who saw little 
that was romantic in the sprawling town 
of narrow streets and dark alleyways, of 
grey stone churches, of market place made 
uglier by an ugly statue of the Duke of 
Cumberland and of castle, rising up from 
the mud of the slums to house the Earls 
of Ross. 

“E. L. Madden & Son,” read the var¬ 
nished signboard over our uncle’s bar and 
grocery shop on Main Street. A large, 
yellow-washed, rambling house topped 
the shop and stretched out way behind 
it wherein we stayed for seven days 
living life as it is lived “behind the coun¬ 
ter” in Ireland. 

Early every morning, Willie Delaney, 
the boy who drove the delivery wagon and 
did odd jobs in store and yard, took down 
the shutters from the two shop windows, 
one of which displayed groceries, the 
other, whiskies, wines and ales. 

Two movable counters were then car- 


110 When I Was a Boy in Ireland 

ried onto the street and on them, during 
the day, was displayed bacon which had 
been brought up from the cellar beneath 
the shop. 

Bobby and I learned, to our surprise, 
that Uncle Eddy sold a great deal more 
Canadian bacon than he did Irish bacon. 
It seemed incredible, but when he ex¬ 
plained to us that Irish bacon commanded 
a high price on the foreign market, we 
came to understand the Irish farmer’s 
policy of selling his own bacon at a high 
price and purchasing Canadian bacon for 
which he paid a low price. 

As the day progressed, customers 
trooped in, the men to drink, the women 
to buy groceries and perhaps when they 
had attended to their purchases and were 
waiting for Alice Flanagan, the shopgirl, 
to make out their bill they, too, would take 
“a little something” to warm them inside. 
The women, however, never drank at the 
bar. They had a room to themselves, off 


A Visit to R os ere a and to Birr 111 

the room where our uncle transacted his 
shipping agency business. 

The Shipping Agency Room! How 
many fine young Irishmen have crossed 
the threshold of that room with but one 
thought in mind—to leave Ireland. And 
for every one of them who booked pas¬ 
sage, there was an anxious mother who 
would come to see our uncle every day 
after her boy had sailed, asking, begging 
pitifully with the voice of a reed torn by 
the North Wind, “Has my boy landed 
yet, Mr. Madden? He’s still at sea, you 
say? But, didn’t he leave three whole 
days ago? He’s not drowned, is he Mr. 
Madden, and you hiding it from me? 
I’m his mother, I should know, Mr. Mad¬ 
den, if anything has happened to my boy. 
What’s that you say: seven days to Amer¬ 
ica? Seven days to America! God bless 
us and save us. Amen!” 

Perhaps a month later the letter would 
come from overseas. Her boy was safe. 



112 When I Was a Boy in Ireland 

He was working. He had enclosed a 
mite of money for his mother. Would 
Mr. Madden in all his goodness, cash it 
for her for she’d he murdered entirely if 
she could understand the foreign money? 
Her boy said in his letter, he would be 
home any day now. Her boy would be 
home any day now, any day now, any day 
now; year after year her boy would be 
home any day now until she was coffined 
in a coffin paid for with money from her 
boy in America who would be home any 
day now. 

Saturday was the busiest day of the 
week for Uncle Eddy, it being market day 
when the farmers, their wives and chil¬ 
dren came to town to purchase their 
weekly supplies. 

They did not come into the shop until 
late afternoon, occupying the morning 
hours disposing of their butter, eggs, 
chickens and vegetables in the market 
place. 


A Visit to Roscrea and to Birr 113 

Some of them, however, scorned the 
market place and would bring their 
produce direct to our uncle who either 
sold it in the shop, or sent it to the Dub¬ 
lin market where it fetched a good price. 
I remember a Mrs. Caly given to this 
habit. 

Mrs. Caly would come into the shop, 
her little beaded bonnet perched saucily 
askew her grey haired head, a smile light¬ 
ing her tight little mouth. “Good day 
to ye, Mr. Madden! Fine day thanks 
be to God! What is the butter fetching 
today, Mr. Madden?” 

“Is it yourself is in it, Mrs. Caly? The 
butter is fetching one and sixpence the 
pound today, my darling.” Uncle Eddy 
always “darlinged” his women customers. 
“Makes them feel young,” he would tell 
you. 

I never think of Mrs. Caly without 
seeing her son, Jamesie beside her. It 
was Jamesie’s job to drive his mother to 


114 When I Was a Boy in Ireland 


town on Saturdays. Mother and son 
would untackle the pony together, in the 
yard, before coming into the shop. They 
had one of the flightiest ponies I have 
ever seen. How little Mrs. Caly had 
courage to sit behind the beast when he 
was forever kicking the buck-board out 
of the trap was more than I could ever 
fathom. 

Jamesie, as I remember him, was a tall, 
thin young man with a young edition of 
his mother’s tiny face and her same, 
squeaky high pitched voice. Men at the 
bar joked about him because he was thirty 
years old and had never shaved. “ 
beard of Jamesie Caly,” they would swear 
in his hearing, making him blush. It was 
whispered, discreetly to be sure, by people 
who have knowledge of such things, that 
Jamesie was a foundling. 

At night, around the hour of nine 
o’clock, the store was closed. Alice Flan- 
nagan and Uncle Eddy then busied them- 


By the 


A Visit to Roscrea and to Birr 115 

selves over the books and the yield of the 
till. How much money had they taken 
that day? Was it up to yesterday’s 
“take”? Was it as good as the “take” of 
that day a week ago? All these were im¬ 
portant questions to be decided while 
Willie Delaney swept up the sawdust 
and washed the floor. 

Sometimes, Bobby and I were allowed 
to lend a hand washing glasses at the bar. 
Oh, but our uncle was particular about 
those glasses; one speck and they had to 
be washed all over again! 

At last, the questions of importance be¬ 
ing settled. Uncle Eddy would clear his 
throat and pronounce in his jolly voice, 
“Not such a bad day, thanks be to God! 
It could have been worse, as the fellow 
said.” 

It was after such a day and on such a 
night, our uncle took us to his farm at 
Knockarlow, where his wife, our Aunt 
Mary, and his children, our cousins, Nora, 


116 When I Was a Boy in Ireland 

Mary, Eithne and Michael lived during 
three seasons of the year, coming into the 
rambling house over the shop only for the 
winter months. 


CHAPTER EIGHT 


KNOCKARLOW 

Uncle Eddy’s Ford stalled on the 
rocky hill in the bohereen at Knockarlow. 
We proceeded on foot, guided by the 
candle lit windows of the farmhouse. 
Aunt Mary, her fair hair sheening, her 
blue eyes sparkling and a shy smile part¬ 
ing her full red lips, bade us welcome and 
insisted that we remove our boots which 
were in a sorry state, being covered with 
yellow mud of the bohereen and squelch¬ 
ing with water from the puddles we had 
stepped into in the dark. 

While Bunty Breen, raven tressed 
working girl, made tea for us, hanging 
the kettle on a wire hook swinging from 
the iron bar that grew up beside and over 

117 


118 When I Was a Boy in Ireland 

the turf fire, we made the acquaintance of 
our cousins. 

Mary, the eldest, was then seven and 
her sisters Nora and Eithne and her 
brother Michael filled the span of her 
young life at intervals of two years. 

Well do I remember the foolish at¬ 
tempt made by Bobby and me to impress 
our cousins as men of the world. Alas, 
we were laughed out of countenance by 
INIary who remarked solemnly: “I expect 
they’ll stop showing off when they get 
to know us.” Even Michael saw no harm 
in kicking his pudgy little legs over the 
rail of his cradle, exposing his bare, 
pink cheeked bottom, and joining in the 
screams of laughter that greeted his sis¬ 
ter’s remark. 

The davs that followed were filled with 
strange, new and exciting experiences. 

We rose every morning at cock crow 
in order to have done with breakfast be¬ 
fore the workmen arrived. When we 


Knockarlow 


119 


trooped downstairs to the kitchen to wash 
ourselves in the large community, white 
enamelled basin—their being no bath¬ 
rooms at Knockarlow—we would find 
Aunt JNIary and Bunty frying bacon and 
eggs and stirring the porridge for the 
morning meal. 

The workmen arrived at eight o’clock. 
INIike Maher, a herdsman who lived on 
the place in a small whitewashed cottage 
at the bottom of the hill field was usually 
the first to put in an appearance. He 
would come into the kitchen, before Uncle 
Eddy left for town, to receive instruc¬ 
tions as to how the day’s work should pro¬ 
ceed. 

Uncle Eddy, at that time, knew a great 
deal more about shopkeeping than he did 
about farming, having purchased the 
farm but a year before. It afforded us, 
therefore, much amusment to hear him 
give Mike his orders. Mike, no matter 
what our uncle suggested, always had 




120 When I Was a Boy in Ireland 

his own way and did what he thought 
best. It was only for appearances’ sake 
he approached Uncle Eddy at all. 

Fortunately, Mike had a head on him 
for farming. He had been brought up to 
it and everything he did turned out for 
the best. 

Mike’s first duty in the morning was to 
bring in the cows to be milked from the 
pasture alongside the bog where they 
spent their nights in mild weather. 

The arrival of the cows was a signal 
for the farmyard cats, several in number, 
to hie themselves to the cow house and to 
sit open-mouthed, on their hind legs, un¬ 
til Mike, beginning to milk, would direct 
thin streams of warm milk into their 
mouths. We had never seen cats drink 
that way before. It was a great surprise 
to us. 

Ned Halley, if he was in good humor, 
would help INIike with the milking al¬ 
though it was not considered part of his 


Knockarlow 


121 


duties. Ned was a strange boy. In all 
but years he was a man. His strength 
was tremendous particularly if his ter¬ 
rible temper, for which he was feared 
throughout the countryside, was in evi¬ 
dence. 

I have seen Ned strike a bullock be¬ 
tween the eyes with his bare fist and 
watched with awe the bullock slump un¬ 
conscious to the ground. 

Aunt Mary would be furious with him 
for days if she found out about such 
things. 

Once, Mike being absent, Ned brought 
in the cows and as they came ambling 
into the yard one of them stepped out of 
line, infuriating Ned so that he threw a 
cudgel at the unfortunate beast. Aunt 
Mary, looking from the kitchen window, 
saw what had happened and, becoming 
incensed, ran into the yard and caught 
Ned by the shoulders and shook him as 
a terrier shakes a rat. Ned looked quietly 


122 When I Was a Boy in Ireland 

at her until her fury spent itself and then 
he pronounced calmly and without visible 
emotion, “If ’twas a man done that, Mam, 
his broken head would be lying at your 
feet this minute.” 

Nevertheless, he never laid hand to the 
cattle after that. Aunt JNIary had won a 
moral victory and Ned’s everlasting re¬ 
spect. 

To hear Mike give orders to Ned was 
an experience by itself. 

“Ned,” JNIike would begin, in what he 
hoped was a winning voice, “what were 
you thinking of turning your hand to 
today?” 

"'Musha, I may as well take the brown 
mare to the forge. She’s badly in need 
of a set of shoes,” Ned would reply if 
that is what he had in mind. 

“That’s good, Ned. That’s good. The 
boss would want you should do that,” 
Mike, happy to escape an outburst of 
Ned’s temper, would agree. 

Then, at lunchtime when the workmen 


Knockarlow 


123 


filled the big stonefloored kitchen, Mike 
seeing Ned whom he believed at the 
forge, could not resist commenting, “Look 
at here, Ned Halley, I thought you were 
taking the brown mare to the forge.’’ 

“Glory be to the great God on high, 
Mike Maher, must you always be tor¬ 
menting me? How could I take the 
brown mare to the forge when I had to 
go to the bog to cut the turf?” 

“Who told you to cut the turf?” 

“Who told me? Who told me, is it? 
The back of my hand to you, Mike Maher, 
for an ignorant amadan! Don’t you know 
full well if the turf isn’t cut this week, 
you might as well leave it rot in the 
ground for it will never dry against the 
winter?” 

And so they would argue back and 
forth across the table until Ned, exas¬ 
perated beyond endurance would fling 
his knife and fork to the table and leave 
the room. 

One day, Bobby and I went with Ned 


124 When I Was a Boy in Ireland 

to the bog to watch him cut the turf. 

The bog fascinated us. We lagged be¬ 
hind Ned, admiring its strange, brooding 
beauty. Probably, our greatest thrill 
came when loitering by a bog hole, look¬ 
ing at our reflections in the depths of its 
rust colored water, we heard a rustling 
noise in the bracken behind us and, a mo¬ 
ment later, a whirr of wings as a pheasant 
took the air. 

We longed for the double barrelled 
shotgun hanging on a rafter of the 
kitchen ceiling. What joy would have 
been ours had we returned with a pheas¬ 
ant for the roasting pot! But no, it was 
the breeding season and the farmers, 
whose farms skirted the bog, would have 
tanned our hides had we perpetrated such 
an outrage. 

Ned was busy with his breast slane, the 
double bladed instrument, with handle 
resembling the letter “T,” used in cutting 
turf close to the surface, when we caught 


Knockarlow 


125 


up with him. He worked in his bare feet to 
save his boots from the soggy ground, 
and we saw the soft turf oozing between 
his toes. (Is there any more delightful 
sensation for a boy than the feeling of 
soft ground, be it mud or turf, oozing 
between his toes?) 

Each time that Ned pressed his breast 
to the handle of the slane, the two blades, 
set at right angles to one another, sunk 
into the rich, red surface turf and sliced 
a bricklike cake that he deftly caught up 
and tossed out onto the ground. 

All day we remained on the bog and 
when, in the early afternoon, tired of play¬ 
ing hide and go seek among the rushes 
and purple heather, we begged Ned to 
allow us handle the slane, he agreed. 

'‘But this is not the slane you were using 
this morning!” Bobby, taking it and ex¬ 
amining it, exclaimed. 

"To be sure it’s not,” Ned admitted. 


126 When I Was a Boy in Ireland 

“That, that you have in your hand, Bobby, 
is a foot slane. You see when we dig way 
down to the black turf and the water starts 
seeping in, it’s easier to shovel it up with 
the foot slane. Watch me now and you’ll 
see how it’s done and maybe learn the 
knack of it.” 

We watched eagerly as Yed placed his 
bare instep on the footrest fixed to the 
straight handle close to the blades and, 
pressing down, heeled the sod of turf onto 
the blades and pitched it up at our feet. 
It seemed quite simple, and we were 
anxious to show Ned we could emulate 
his example. 

Bobby jumped into the pit and with 
Ned to guide him managed to get the sod 
onto the blades, but when it came to toss¬ 
ing it up, his strength failed him and the 
sod fell back into the pit. 

“Better luck next time, a micT Ned 
encouraged. 

Then it was my turn. By the powers 


Knocharlow 


127 


that be, I would show them! I was the 
boy to toss the sod a mile high in the air 
if necessary! I was so confident of my 
ability that I went through the elaborate 
ritual of removing my coat, rolling up my 
sleeves and, as I had seen Ned do to get a 
good grip on the slane handle, spitting on 
my hands. I got the sod onto the blades 
easily enough and then with a mighty 
heave, I heaved—heaved the sod no higher 
than my head, slipped on the sodden 
ground and wound up on my bottom on 
the floor of the pit. 

That evening, walking down the bog 
road, the curlews’ mournful note sounding 
in our ears, the will-o-the-wisps dancing 
before us on the rush tops trying to lure 
us, before our time, to Tir-na-n-og, Ned 
told us how the turf had to be worked 
before it was brought into the farmyard 
to be stacked for winter use. 

When it had all been cut, it had to be 
spread flat on the ground to dry. After 



128 When I Was a Boy in Ireland 

several days, if God was good and the 
weather fine, it would be built into small 
mounds, called “stooks,” and, if God con¬ 
tinued to be good and the weather, as a 
result of His goodness, continued to be 
fine, in another week it would be built into 
larger mounds. When it was thoroughly 
dry and not a split second before, they 
would go to the bog with donkey and 
creel; creel being the name given to a 
wheelless vehicle of two long shafts to 
which a large basket is tied. The turf 
would be piled into the creel and trips 
would be made back and forth until all 
the turf had been won from the bog. 

What did Aunt Mary do, besides shak¬ 
ing Ned Scully for beating the cows and 
looking after her brood and cooking for 
the house with none, save Bunty, to help 
her? What did she do? If you must know, 
she made butter, the best butter, the rich¬ 
est butter, the tastiest butter in the whole 
of Ireland. 


Knockarlow 


129 


I shall not remove my hat to another 
when it comes to butter making, for Aunt 
Mary is so far first, there is no second. 
Tuesdays and Fridays were, by virtue of 
Aunt Mary’s say so, churning days at 
Knockarlow. 

On those days, strangers entering the 
kitchen, where the barrel shaped churn 
swung carelessly on its wooden supports, 
were viewed with suspicion lest they have 
the evil eye and use it to render barren 
the cream; a commoner practice than you 
would imagine and one not to be sneered 
at under any circumstance. 

Now that I am inviting you to Aunt 
Mary’s kitchen to see, as I saw when I 
was a boy, the churning in progress, I tell 
you that on entering you must say, “God 
Bless the butter!” and that it will be ex¬ 
pected of you to give the churn a turn, 
by which action you will show you are not 
possessed of the evil eye. Come! 

The raven tressed girl lifting the three 


130 When I Was a Boy in Ireland 

legged pot of boiling water from the fire 
is Eunty Breen. She has a tongue as 
sharp as vinegar at times so do not get 
in her way. That is Aunt Mary, you 
see, by the churn, directing Bunty who 
is now pouring the water into the churn, 
scalding it. Aunty Mary screws down the 
lid of the churn and swishes the water 
around inside while Bunty hurries out to 
the pump in the yard for a bucket of 
water. Bunty is back with the water but 
she lays it aside. Why? See for your¬ 
self! Yes, it is a bag of salt she has taken 
from the hearth where it is kept lest the 
dampness soften it. What is she doing 
with it? Well, when you were not looking. 
Aunt Mary emptied the churn of water 
and now, Bunty, her sleeves rolled back, 
her raven tresses dancing a Highland 
Fling, is rubbing the salt against the sides 
of the churn, using her full strength be¬ 
cause she knows that a clean churn is half 
the battle won in making butter. Now 


Knocharlow 131 

for the cold water. Swish! ’Round and 
around it goes. It certainly ought to be 
thoroughly clean by now. But no, there 
is Bunty fetching another pot of boiling 
water from the fire, scalding the churn 
again. And now another bucket of cold 
water. Will they ever finish? Yes, now, 
the churn is clean. 

While Aunty Mary and Bunty disap¬ 
pear into the dairy to fetch the cream, 
let me tell you, the little button on the lid 
of the churn is an air release. Aunty 
Mary and Bunty will press it with their 
thumbs at intervals during the churning 
and the compressed air will rush out, 
making a great to-do and noise of whis¬ 
tling which you must not allow to startle 
you as it did me when I was new to the 
ways of churning. 

Here they come! You would not think 
there was so much cream in all the world, 
would you? All of it came from nine 
cows in three days. There they go, swing- 


132 When I Was a Boy in Ireland 

ing it off the floor. One, two, three and 
up! How smoothly it flows into the churn! 
''Screw down the lid, Bunty, like a good 
girl.” Aunt Mary always calls Bunty a 
good girl and she the wildest tom-boy in 
four provinces. But what is the delay? 
Why has Bunty left the kitchen now? 
Patience! Here she is, back already! 
The bottle, she went to fetch, is of Holy 
Water. Aunt Mary takes it from her, 
uncorks it and sprinkles the churn: “In 
the name of the Father and of the Son 
and of the Holy Ghost, Amen.” 

Bunty takes first turn at the handle 
while Aunt Mary busies herself getting 
ready the utensils to be used when the 
churn has accomplished all that is expected 
of it. 

But there, Bunty’s roving eye has lit on 
you. Now, go up to her and say, “God 
save you kindly, good girl!” She will give 
you back the ritual: “God save you kindly, 
kind reader!” before yielding her place to 


Knockarlow 


133 


you. Stay! Before turning the handle, 
Bless yourself with the Holy Water. 
Ready now! Start turning, slowly at 
first, throwing your weight on your for¬ 
ward foot as the handle swings away from 
you and on your rear foot as it swings 
to you. Heavier than you thought, is it 
not ? It was swinging the churn that gave 
Aunt Mary and Bunty the muscle that 
makes most men and all women fear and 
respect them. 

It is now Aunt Mary’s turn at the 
handle. Bunty goes to sit by the fire to 
rest. The churn somersaults through the 
air, like a little boy’s hoop, before Aunt 
Mary’s fast, rhythmically moving arm. 

What is that noise of bicycle pedals 
being reversed? Where does it come 
from? From the churn? Yes, from the 
churn. It is the yellow beads of butter 
beating against its sides. 

Bunty rises from her stool by the fire 
and pulls out the stopper from the base of 


134 When I Was a Boy in Ireland 

the churn and catches the outflowing but¬ 
termilk in a large pan. “That’s the stuff 
to grow hair on your chest,” she laughs, 
gazing at the small particles of butter, 
dancing lightly on top of the milk. She 
replaces the stopper. Aunty Mary gives 
the churn a few turns that the butter may 
form itself into a compact mass and then 
calls, “Unscrew the lid, Bunty, like a 
good girl.” 

Behold! They have captured the sun 
and all of its golden beauty in the bottom 
of a churn! 

It is Aunt Mary who fetches the bag of 
salt from the hearth this time. See, she 
is casting handfulls of it over the golden 
mass. Now she is kneading to blend but¬ 
ter and salt. “Come here, Bunty, like a 
good girl and taste the butter.” Glory 
be to Saint Peter! Bunty has taken a 
liking to you, and she usually as shy as a 
faun with strangers. She wants you to 
taste the butter. A little too salty, you 


Knockarlow 


135 


say? Aunt Mary agrees with you: “A 
little too salty it is.” She compliments 
you on your keen taste. Then, “Bring me 
some water, Bunty, like a good girl!” she 
asks. Bunty brings the water and be¬ 
tween them they wash the butter until it 
is freed from surplus salt. 

The paddles and weighing scales are 
brought from the dairy and, as you can 
see for yourself, the butter is patted into 
pound pieces and set on a platter lined 
with cabbage leaves to keep it cool and 
fresh. 

Aunt Mary will consider you ungra¬ 
cious if you go without joining her in a 
cup of tea. Oh, and by the way, be sure 
to God bless the cows who made the but¬ 
ter possible, before you leave. 


CHAPTER NINE 

THE NOBLE COUNTESS 

Before bidding farewell to Knockar- 
low, the farm on the low hill, I want to 
tell you how we spent our last evening 
there and the story we heard from the 
withered lips of a wandering herb woman 
and story teller who visited with us that 
evening. 

After a day of farewells to places and 
people we had come to love, we sat with 
our cousins, our uncle and aunt, around 
the turf fire in the kitchen talking over the 
“high spots” of our visit. It was pleasant 
to be so occupied and we were resentful 
at first at the intrusion of an old, bent, 
spent woman who raised the latch of the 
kitchen door and walked in among us. 

136 


The Noble Countess 137 

“God save you kindly,” were her first 
words. 

“And you too, old woman,” Uncle 
Eddy made answer for all. 

“It’s a bit of a tale I would be spinning 
for the young lads leaving the shelter of 
this roof tomorrow.” The herb woman, 
speaking in a voice that seemed to come 
from another world, made known. 

“How did you know we were going 
away, old woman?” I asked, surprised at 
her knowledge. 

“It came to me two nights back and I 
sleeping on top of a mountainy hill in the 
county Galway.” 

Her explanation filled us with respect 
for her, for surely there could be no doubt 
that she was possessed of the “second 
sight.” 

“You’ll be having a cup of tea, kind 
woman?” Aunt Mary invited. 

“Not until I tell the tale, a vourneen 
deelish/" answered the herb woman, af- 


138 When I Was a Boy in Ireland 

fectionately dubbing my aunt her little 
loved one. 

Uncle Eddy made a place for the herb 
woman by the fire and when she was seated 
comfortably, her bony, vein threaded 
hands stretched over the fire to catch some 
of its warmth, she began her tale, the tale 
of The Noble Countess Kathleen O'Shea: 

“A long time ago—aye, even before my 
time, it was—a woeful scarcity of food 
settled on the land, causing the flesh of 
the people to tighten on their bones and a 
hard, ferocious look to come into their 
eyes. The potato crop, to make matters 
worse, went black in the ground that year 
and there was no saving the hay at all, 
except for bedding for the cows, after the 
rain had worked its way with it. Och, 
’twas as if there was a curse on the land!” 
The old woman paused and crossed her¬ 
self to ward off the evil attendant on her 
observation. Then she continued: 




The Noble Countess 139 

“Well, bedad, in the midst of all the 
misfortune, who should come parading 
the countryside but a couple of the ugliest 
looking spalpeens you ever laid eyes on, 
and they loaded down with the curse of 
mankind: filthy gold. The devil’s own 
children they were and no mistake. But 
there I go slipping the halter and spoiling 
the tale, as the saying is. 

“The two of them never tarried for bite 
nor sup nor rest ’till they came to the 
town where the Countess Kathleen O’Shea 
was in residence. There it was they put 
up at the inn of Mary Walshe, a decent 
but misguided poor soul as you’ll soon 
see. 

“It wasn’t no more nor no less than 
two days before Mary—God grant her 
perpetual rest—took the notion to have a 
word with her queer lodgers. 

“ ‘Gentlemen,’ she says, says she, ‘ ’tis 
a great wonder, you, with all your gold, 
wouldn’t be after helping the poor people 



140 When I Was a Boy in Ireland 

who, as you can see for yourselves, are 
nigh and next door to starving.’ 

“ ‘My kind and dear lady,’ they made 
bold to answer as brazen as a couple of 
bog ponies, ‘waiting it is, we are, for the 
poor people, whom we pity so much, we’re 
near to tears, to come to us, for we don’t 
care overmuch to be parading our riches 
in times like these, lest we be judged in 
league with the Evil One!’ 

“ ‘Faith, it’s scarce thinking that of you, 
they’ll be,’ said the poor innocent Mary, 
and she, as quick as a wild duck flying 
from danger, let everyone in town and 
country ’round and about know of the 
men with the gold. 

''Oclionej Ochone/" the old woman again 
interrupted her narrative. “But as I’ve 
said before, it’s the devil’s own children 
they were. No less they wanted for their 
gold than the souls of the unfortunates 
unfortunate enough to come to them. 

“A pretty kettle of fish it was for the 


The Noble Countess 141 

poor people to be up against. Not one of 
them but had starving children and those 
that hadn’t already buried ‘the wife’ had 
her to think of, too. With the gold, they 
could buy what little food there was to be 
had. Without it they had nothing. Och, 
’twas a sorry day for Ireland, the day it 
happened and none so sorry as those who 
sold themselves. For sell themselves, they 
did, lock, stock and barrel to the devil.” 

Tears welled in my young eyes, believ¬ 
ing implicitly, as I did, every word I 
heard. The old woman, noticing my grief, 
leaned towards me and placing her 
gnarled hands on my shoulders, endeav¬ 
ored to sooth me: 

'^Whisth^ don’t cry, alanna, God’s 
ways are strange ways as you’ll find out as 
I go along. 

“It wasn’t more than a matter of 
hours,” she went on, picking up the thread 
of her story, “before the Countess Kath¬ 
leen heard tell of the terrible misfortune 


142 When I Was a Boy in Ireland 

descended on the place. Straight as the 
crow flies, she made her way to Mary 
Walshe and bade her gather the people 
from far and near to hear her word, which 
thing, Mary, let it be to her credit, did. 

‘'When everyone was gathered, the 
noble Countess had her say with them. 

“ ‘My darling people,’ she says, as 
simple as you please, ‘sorry, I am, to hear 
the word I hear this day. Sorry, I am, 
you sell yourselves for gold and the pun¬ 
ishments—the flaming punishments—of 
Hell. Sorry, I am, I did not get the word 
sooner that the evil might have been 
skirted entirely. But I am here now and 
we can but trust in God, and it’s not too 
late. All my jewels, all my treasures 
have I sold for gold that you may neither 
thirst nor hunger, that you may renounce 
the devil and all his works and pomps.’ 

“It’s little need I have to be telling 
you,” the old woman smiled, “a great cheer 
went up into the skies, and traveled all 




The Noble Countess 143 

the way to Slievenamon, so loud it was, 
for the brave and generous woman. 

“But the devil is ever a ‘tricky the loop.’ 
When the two spalpeens first got word of 
what was afoot, they were as mad as a 
farmer with cattle at the cross roads on a 
fair morning—fit to be tied they were. 

“Soon enough, however, the anger died 
in them and they put their two heads to¬ 
gether and hatched out a plot that left 
them smirking, so evil it was. 

“The Countess Kathleen, unaware of 
their scheming, went right ahead, true to 
her word, tending the wants of the poor, 
seeing they had their fill, each and every 
one of them, and they, God help them, 
knelt on the hard ground and blessed her 
for a saint. 

“For two whole days she gave. But on 
the morning of the third day, going to her 
treasure chest, she found it empty, which 
was strange since it had been full and 
more, the night before. 



144 When I Was a Boy in Ireland 

""BegoVj it’s great distress, she was in en¬ 
tirely. Cried down tears, she did, and rent 
her silken tresses, because it’s right well 
she knew the devil’s messengers had stolen 
it. 

“Meanwhile, word of the country’s 
plight was noised abroad and a ship load 
of provisions from one of them foreign 
countries was on the high seas. It was 
said, at the time, by those having knowl¬ 
edge of such things—seafaring men and 
the like—that it would be eight days be¬ 
fore it reached the shores of Ireland. 

“Eight days, you might be after think¬ 
ing, is only a drop in the bucket of time, 
but if you had to starve that long you’d 
sing a different song, my fine people,” 
the old woman murmured impressively, 
as if she, herself, had known such terrible 
privation, causing Cousin Mary to ejacu¬ 
late: “God save us all from such evil!” 

''Begorray the old woman made known, 
“you haven’t heard the half of it yet. 




The Noble Countess 145 

“On the next morning, after spending 
the night in prayer, the good Countess 
dressed herself, modestly as was her wont, 
and set out to have a ‘confab’ with the 
evil ones. 

“ ‘Good morrow to you, kind and gra¬ 
cious lady!’ says they, foxy as you like, the 
minute they laid eyes on her. 

“ ‘It is not wishing you the time of day 
I would be,’ answered the Countess to 
their salutation. 

“ ‘What, then, do you want from us 
since we are not worthy of your Good 
morrow?’ they asked, not at all pleased 
at her haugty way with them. 

“ ‘Buying souls for Satan is your mis¬ 
sion to our sad country, is it not?’ said 
Kathleen without any beating about the 
bush. 

“ ‘Since the honored Countess puts it 
that way, we have but one answer to make 
and that is: yes!’ said they. 

“Faith, up spoke my brave Kathleen, 


146 When I Was a Boy in Ireland 

telling them she would sell them her soul 
but at a costly price. 

“ ‘How much?’ shouted the evil ones, 
for truth to tell they had been sent spe¬ 
cially to rob the Countess of her right to 
Heaven, she being of such high virtue, 
she turned bad into good wherever she 
happened to set foot. 

“Then Kathleen—God love her!—drew 
a bag from the folds of her dress: ‘Fill this 
with gold,’ she commanded, ‘and my soul 
is yours.’ 

“ ‘Done,’ they agreed and for an hour 
and more they poured their precious metal 
into the bag until, at last, it was filled to 
the brim. 

“ ‘The bargain is sealed,’ said the evil 
ones, holding out their hands to shake on 
it. 

“ ‘It’s not joining hands with you yet a 
while, I’ll be.’ Kathleen denied them and 
calling to her servants who were without, 
she departed. 



The Noble Countess 147 

“When she got home, she distributed 
the gold equally among all, asking them to 
use it sparingly until the provisions came 
from abroad. 

“Afterwards, she locked herself in her 
room, giving orders she was not to be dis¬ 
turbed by living mortal. 

“Three days went by—three weary days 
—without the Countess making any sign. 
At last, the worrying grew great among 
the people and they, after knocking loudly 
and getting no answer, broke down the 
door. 

“God help us all in our time of need, 
but it is stone dead they found her and she 
with a smile of great peace on her beauti¬ 
ful face. 

“There was, you may be sure, great 
mourning all over the land and the keen¬ 
ing at her funeral was the loudest ever 
heard in all Ireland and her funeral the 
biggest ever seen for that matter.” 

At that point, I remember vividly. 



148 When I Was a Boy in Ireland 

shouting, “But did God forgive the 
Countess for selling her soul to the devil, 
old woman?’’ 

“What a question you ask,” the old 
woman grumbled angrily. “Of course 
He forgave her. She is a saint in Heaven 
this day, you can take my word for it for 
the Church hasn’t got around to can- 
nonizing her as yet.” 

“What ever happened to the evil one?” 
Bobby wanted to know. 

""Arra, them were the boys, were they 
not?” the old woman shook her head over 
them. “I’ll tell you what happened them 
and didn’t they deserve it richly—there’s 
a river down Cork way known by the name 
Blackwater and it’s many a time in my 
rambles I’ve stopped off to look in its 
waters and see on the bottom none other 
than those same two spalpeens. They 
must, for God had ordained it so, stay 
there until The Last Day as a punish¬ 
ment.” 



The Noble Countess 149 

'‘A finer story has never been told under 
this roof,” Uncle Eddy complimented the 
old woman on her skill. 

“I have the gift,'' asknowledged the old 
woman simply. 

“You’ll have a cup of tea now,” sug¬ 
gested Aunt Mary. 

“I will, a vourneen deelish. I’ll have a 
cup of tea now.” 

“Thank you for your story, old 
woman,” Bobby and I chorused, since she 
had told it specially for us. 

A few moments later the clinking of 
cups against saucers filled the kitchen. 


CHAPTER TEN 


WATERPARK 

When Bobby and I returned to Tra- 
more, we found Mother completely re¬ 
covered from her illness. We also found 
that Sir Stork had been busy in our 
absence, presenting us with a calf, two 
colts, a filly, three Kerry Blue puppies, 
thirteen bonhams, four kittens and a baby 
whom Mother introduced as our new 
brother John, much to our disgust. 

Friends from far and near came to see 
the baby and drink his health, ignoring 
completely the newly born animals that 
Bobby and I considered vastly superior to 
our new brother. 

The local newspaper carried a para¬ 
graph, quoting Father as having said John 
was a second Jack Dempsey. This riled 


150 


Water park 151 

me considerably because, when I was born, 
Father said the same thing except that 
it was of Jack Johnson he said it. 

But it was not untill Mother’s numerous 
lady friends started pinching our noses 
and saying, “Oh, Bobby and Alan, the 
new baby has put your noses out of joint,” 
that we rebelled and plotted to dispose of 
the new baby by giving him to the first 
travelling tinker man who came down the 
road. 

The plot, however, was nipped in the 
bud by Father’s decision that it was high 
time we resumed our studies so rudely 

interrupted by the closing of Mount Saint 

/ 

Benedict. 

Our new school was in Waterford City 
and was known as Waterpark. 

I have often wondered why it was called 
Waterpark. Perhaps it was because it 
was bounded on one side by a public 
park and on the other side by the steel- 
grey waters of the River Suir. 


152 When I Was a Boy in Ireland 

The school was run by Christian 
Brothers, who cured their pupils of in¬ 
subordination with a leather strap, carried 
on their shoulders under their soutanes, 
when not in use, which was seldom. 

There was a rumor in circulation at 
Waterpark, that the placing of a hair 
from a horse’s tail across the palm of 
the hand when receiving a “bang,” or 
slap, would result in the leather strap 
splitting its stitches and breaking in two 
pieces. Now that I remember it, the 
rumor was also current at Mount Saint 
Benedict but there corporal punishment 
was rarely, if ever, administered to the 
hands, making it impractical to attempt 
to prove the rumor, and, although it did 
loom practical at Waterpark, no boy to 
my knowledge ever tried it. To this day, 
I regret not having done so. I might 
have won the esteem and veneration of 
future generations of schoolboys had the 
attempt proved successful. 


Water park 153 

The school building at Waterpark was 
a red, wooden bungalow. Its floors, which 
always looked as if someone, at some time 
or other, had sprinkled them generously 
with coal dust, were not immune to the 
moods of the River Suir, suggesting yet 
another reason for the name Waterpark 
and, come to think on it, the school colors, 
black and red, may have been borrowed 
from the color of the building and the 
color of its floors. 

We travelled by train to and from 
school and I do believe those twenty min¬ 
ute journeys to be the happiest journeys 
of my life. 

The morning ride was dedicated to 
homework that should have been done the 
night before but never was; the evening 
ride to what Pat Madigan, the train 
guard, referred to as ‘‘blackguarding.’’ 

Had a stranger looked into the carriage 
we occupied on those morning rides, he 
would have fancied it a travelling school 


154 When I Was a Boy in Ireland 

and his eyes would have sought out the 
absent schoolmaster. 

Had the stranger lingered, he would 
have witnessed strange happenings, in¬ 
deed. 

He would have seen Paddy Walshe ex¬ 
changing his solved algebra problems— 
Paddy was a wizard at algebra—for a 
verbal resume of a history lesson, with 
John Christopher Cusack, called “J. C.” 
for short. He would have seen Paddy 
Power and his brother Redmond Power 
waging a battle royal as to which of them 
had repeated the Greek alphabet correctly. 
He would have seen Alan Buck, shame¬ 
lessly tracing a map to be presented in 
Geography class later in the day as having 
been drawn free hand and without the 
aid of an atlas. He would have seen Joe 
Walsh and Bobby Buck, together, render¬ 
ing Virgil passably different from the 
translation in their possession. And, as 
the train neared its destination, he would 


Water park 155 

have seen every boy dash towards Pau- 
deen Murphy who had just completed his 
Gaelic lesson. He would have heard 
Paudeen’s futile words of protest, “Why 
should I give it you? Why don’t you do 
your own lessons?” He would have seen 
Paudeen cast to the floor, his copybook 
taken from him and its contents carefully 
noted and written down in our copybooks. 

When we entered our classroom every 
morning, it was customary for the Brother 
in charge to deliver a scathing oration 
about the “laggardly Tramore boys.” 

We, you see, owing to there being no 
earlier train, arrived one full hour after 
classes had commenced. It would, how¬ 
ever, be unjust if I allowed you to think 
it was because of the train service, over 
which we had no control, the scathing ora¬ 
tion was delivered. No, it was because 
the train left Tramore at nine o’clock, ar¬ 
riving in Waterford at twenty minutes 
past the hour and we, “the laggardly 


156 When I Was a Boy in Ireland 

Tramore boys/' spent forty minutes walk¬ 
ing the quarter of a mile between station 
and school. 

We maintained, stoutly, you may be 
sure, that it was physically impossible for 
us to traverse the distance in less time. 

One day, however, a boy of the mas¬ 
ter’s pet variety, gave us away completely 
by covering the distance in ten minutes 
flat. 

Well do I remember the fate meted 
out to the unfortunate wretch that after¬ 
noon on the return journey to Tramore, 
but fearing to have my race dubbed bar¬ 
barian, I shall but tell you that we threw 
his cap out of the window, passing the 
Metal Bridge, so that, on reaching Tra¬ 
more, he had to walk the tracks for a mile 
to retrieve it. And, lest you misjudge 
the spirit of the Irish, let me assure you 
that we continued to use forty minutes of 
time to reach Waterpark from the station. 
Had we acknowledged defeat in the mat- 


Water park 157 

ter, we would never have memorized our 
Shakespeare as thoroughly as we did, for 
it was on those walks, we memorized the 
passages set for us by our English teacher. 

Picture a group of schoolboys, books 
in hand, strolling by the muddy banks of 
a slow flowing tributary river, memoriz¬ 
ing Mark Anthony’s famous oration in 
this terrible fashion— 

Friends, Romans, Countrymen, 

Friends, Romans, Countrymen, lend 
Friends, Romans, Countrymen, lend me 
Friends, Romans, Countrymen, lend me your 
Friends, Romans, Countrymen, lend me your 
ears. 

Add to the picture a daub of thick, 
south of Ireland brogue and you will have 
a portrait of the manner in which we 
murdered Shakespeare every morning. 

Yet, when it came to casting for a 
performance of A Midsummer Nighfs 
Dream, it was, at least, two of the Tra- 



158 When I Was a Boy in Ireland 

more laggards who were alloted important 
roles. Joe Walshe played Titania as 
she had never been played before; a pair 
of water wings, that had to be inflated be¬ 
tween acts, tied across his chest. Alan 
Buck played Puck, thereby giving the 
Brothers a glorious revenge, for when he 
mouthed the line: “I’ll put a girdle ’round 
the earth in forty minutes,” they, out in 
front, whispered audibly: “You ought to 
girdle the distance between station and 
school in less time, at that rate.” 

There was a lay teacher at Waterpark 
whom I shall always, kindly, remember. 
Johnny Dyan was his name, dignifled 
somewhat by the letters, M.A., that fol¬ 
lowed after it. Johnny was an elderly 
man. What little hair remained to him 
was white. He was short in stature but 
solid as a rock. In his young days he had, 
besides his brilliant scholastic reputation, 
a reputation as a football player. Indeed, 


Water park 159 

he had won his “cap,” playing for Ireland 
against foreign invaders on several oc¬ 
casions. Johnny’s eyes were brown 
saucers that exuded rays of fear and pene¬ 
trated to the very marrow of his pupils. 
He chewed tobacco in class, and in such 
a manner that his lips were always wet, 
and sneering and a slow dribble of tobacco 
juice nearly always marred his chin. 

He taught us History and those eyes of 
his were capable of picking out, no mat¬ 
ter how skillfully hidden, any boy, who 
under cover of his desk, carried a history 
book on his knee. 

His method of punishing such culprits 
was, I believe, unique. He would order 
them clear of their desks to the “line,” or 
open floor beside the desks. There, he 
would keep them standing in terrified 
suspense for five or ten minutes. Then, 
very much as a cat stalking a bird, he 
would come on them, his eyes blazing, his 
tobacco stained lips caught between his 


160 When I Was a Boy in Ireland 

teeth and, with his knuckles, rendered 
more pain giving by his clenched fist, rap 
them sharply on their unprotected heads. 
If a culprit cringed, Johnny would stand 
there until he straightened himself up 
and in such cases an additional rap was 
administered, covering the crime of cow¬ 
ardice. The raps, as I very well know, 
often induced headaches of an hour’s du¬ 
ration. 

Yet, withal, Johnny Dyan, M.A., is the 
teacher I respect above all others of my 
schooldays. Perhaps, if I did not ap¬ 
preciate him then, I can now make amends 
by doffing my hat, and keeping my head 
out of reach of his knuckles, bow before 
his great knowledge and superior wisdom. 

Although Bobby and I began our 
schooldays together, he ended them before 
I did, choosing to be apprenticed to a firm 
of electrical engineers in Waterford City. 

We missed being together but, being 




Water park 161 

brothers, and not given overmuch to in¬ 
dulging our emotions, we did not speak 
of the sorrow our parting caused us. 

One year later, I said good-bye to Wa- 
terpark, realizing that I, too, was growing 
up and that it was time I turned my 
thoughts to earning a living. 

We do not, unfortunately, have in Ire¬ 
land the opportunities to go through col¬ 
lege that American boys have and those 
of us whose parents cannot bear the heavy 
expense involved, must, early in life, look 
for an occupation. 


CHAPTER ELEVEN 


FAILURE AND FAREWELL 

It was settled. I had seemingly de¬ 
cided my fate. I had decided to become 
a wireless operator. 

The glowing picture, painted with 
words by my father, of a uniform adorned 
with gold braid, decided me. All that I 
had to do to gain the privilege of wearing 
this uniform was to go to Dublin, attend 
there the Atlantic Radio College, study 
hard for nine months, pass my examina¬ 
tion and then ask my father to buy it for 
me. 

I arrived in Dublin on a winter’s night. 
The air, what there was of it, was taken 
up with thick fog, colored yellow by 
flickering gas lamps and with the vile 
odor of the River Liffey. 

162 


Failure and Farewell 163 

I hired a hansom and proceeded over 
the wet and slippery cobbled streets to 
Rane’s Hotel in Gardiner Square on the 
north side of the city. 

Rane’s Hotel, in those days, was a 
boarding house, glorified like so many of 
its kind with the name hotel. 

At Rane’s, everybody sat down to meals 
at the same time and at the same table— 
there was only one table. If you were 
absent at meal time, you did not eat. 

Mrs. Rane looked like a madonna. She 
did the cooking and the meals were served 
by her sister. Miss Kaven, who did not 
look like a madonna but prayed each 
night before the image of one that she 
might find a husband before she withered. 
I put her in touch with the Metal Man. 

When I entered the sitting room at 
Rane’s that first night, I saw several young 
men pouring over weighty looking tomes. 
They proved themselves fellow students 
and, as soon as I had made myself known, 


164 When I Was a Boy in Ireland 

they cast aside their books and, from 
under a divan, dragged a radio set, a radio 
that I later learned was the property of 
Mrs. Rane who fondly supposed it doing 
duty in the matter of entertainment on 
the heavy mahogany sideboard, its cus¬ 
tomary resting place. 

It was a six tube, battery set and my 
fellow students had turned it into a trans¬ 
mitter, using a key and buzzer to transit 
messages in Morse Code to other students 
located in other hotels throughout the 
city. The messages sent and received 
were not devoid of humor, judging from 
the hilarious laughter that filled the room. 

How long this would have continued 
had there not been a knock on the hall 
door, I do not know. Mrs. Rane answered 
the knock. We heard her voice raised in 
protest and a moment later just as the 
radio set disappeared under the divan, 
two men, obviously detectives, burst into 
the room: 


Failure and Farewell 165 

“Which of ye is transmitting without a 
license?” the taller of the two demanded 
roughly. 

A boy, whom I came to know as Michael 
Dwan, answered for all: 

“Transmitting what?” His intonation 
was of curiosity rather than guilt. 

“There’s not a bit of use beating about 
the bush. We traced it to this house. 
Who done it? Who done it? That’s 
what we want to know and that’s what 
we’re here to find out.” 

“Maybe you’ll have the kindness to tell 
us when you find out, Mr. Detective man,” 
Dwan unperturbed by the brashness of 
the man replied. 

“Where’s the radio you spoke of?” The 
detective turned questioningly to Mrs. 
Rane. 

Mrs. Rane’s eyes turned to the side¬ 
board and very nearly popped out with 
surprise: “It . . . it isn’t there, officer,” 
she confessed weakly. 


166 When I Was a Boy in Ireland 

“To be sure it’s not there,” intervened 
Dwan. “’Twas making a noise last night 
as if it were in touch with the infernal re¬ 
gions, so, this afternoon I took it to the 
repair man.” 

“You had no business . . .” Mrs. 
Rane cut her words short, as one suddenly 
stricken dumb. She had seen Dwan’s 
lowered eyelid. 

“Let’s look over the house, John,” sug¬ 
gested the talkative to the silent detective. 

Upstairs they went, taking Mrs. Rane 
with them. Dwan waited until their foot¬ 
steps had died away into the higher re¬ 
gion. Then he reached for the set and 
calmly commenced transmitting as if 
nothing untoward had happened. 

The disgruntled detectives left without 
solving the mystery. 

I have no doubt that it was this same 
Dwan who fixed my bed that night so that 
when I hopped into it, it collapsed on the 
floor. 


Failure and Farewell 167 

Such was my introduction to Rane’s 
hotel. 

There is an old ballad my mother used 
to sing that has in it the spirit of Dublin 
and for that reason and because I frankly 
own my own inability to provide a better 
picture, I give you now the words of 
Molly Malone, 

In Dublin’s fair city, 

Where the girls are so pretty, 

There lives a sweet girl called Molly Malone. 
She wheels her wheel-barrow 
Through streets broad and narrow. 

Crying: ‘‘Cockles and mussels, alive, alive-o!” 

She was a fishmonger. 

And sure ’tis no wonder. 

For so were her mother and father afore her. 

She died of the fever 

And no one could save her. 

Crying: “Cockles and mussels, alive, alive-o!” 

While admitting I never saw a cockle 
girl in Dublin, I maintain that the ballad 


168 When I Was a Boy in Ireland 

has captured the spirit of the city. It 
gives a picture of the streets without the 
tedious process of naming them. It tells 
something of the nature of the people and 
it is not devoid of Dublin humor, as you 
can very well see. Perhaps it has one 
fault. It does not take into account the 
fighting spirit of the people and what, 
say I, would any Irishman be without a 
fighting spirit? Nothing, less than noth- 
ing! 

It is for me, then, to inject a wee bit of 
a fight, to balance the budget and when 
I recall the lump the size of a duck’s egg 
raised on my head by a policeman’s batten 
on Armistice Day, 1927, outside the Gres¬ 
ham Hotel, the task looms comparatively 
easy. 

Whether school was closed that day or 
not, I do not remember. If it was closed, 
I had an easy conscience; if it was not, I 
was guilty of truancy. 

It had been whispered for days before 


Failure and Farewell 169 

that the Irish Republicans would endeavor 
to break up the parade of Irish soldiers 
who had fought on the side of England in 
the Great War. It had also been whis¬ 
pered that anyone wearing a Flanders 
Poppy had better remain indoors. 

Outside and in front of the Gresham 
Hotel, a platform had been erected that 
the speechmakers might voice their sympa¬ 
thy with what somebody has termed “the 
fallen dead.” 

I arrived on the scene in time to see a 
parade of ex-soldiers come marching down 
O’Connell Street to the sound of martial 
music. They halted before the platform. 
A motor car drew up and from its up¬ 
holstered depths, stepped the speech- 
makers. An ominous tension filled the 
air. The first of the speechmakers 
stepped onto the platform but he never 
uttered a word. A corps of Republicans 
dashed suddenly from a side street, hurl¬ 
ing tear gas into the midst of the as- 


170 When I Was a Boy in Ireland 

sembled multitude. To add to the gen¬ 
eral confusion, the day being foggy, fog 
signals had been placed on the tram car 
tracks and, as the trams passed by, the 
signals exploded giving the impression of 
guns being fired. Soldiers, populace and 
speechmakers fled for their lives in all 
directions and as they did so a contingent 
of police arrived on the scene and charged 
after them with battens, believing them 
to be Republicans. 

I, as I have already mentioned, was one 
of their targets. 

My term of nine months being ended, 
I returned to Tramore to await the result 
of my examination. 

There was no doubt in my mind as to 
the result but, considerate of others as I 
have always tried to be, I postponed tell¬ 
ing Mother and Dad until it became neces¬ 
sary to do so. 

I confess now, that the only thing that 


Failure and Farewell 171 

appealed to me about the calling of a wire¬ 
less operator was the uniform. I did learn 
to send and receive morse code at twenty 
five words a minute, but I was a hopeless 
failure when it came to understanding the 
theoretical side of electricity. Ohms law 
and Faradays law although I attended 
lectures on them both at Trinity Uni¬ 
versity, are still as great a mystery to me 
as they were then. 

When the results were published my 
failure was uncovered. I had, I blush to 
confess, received a “duck egg”—^no marks 
at all—for theory. 

The atmosphere at home following the 
tidings was much the atmosphere outside 
the Gresham Hotel on Armistice Day— 
tense. 

Mother soon smothered her feelings of 
disappointment but Father was not so 
easily won over. His pride was wounded. 
I had failed and my failure was on the 
lips of the two thousand souls that make 



172 When I Was a Boy in Ireland 

up the town of Tramore and, to make 
matters worse, another Tramore boy, who 
had been attending a wireless school in 
Wales, passed his examination with fly¬ 
ing colors. 

Ah me, what tragic days! 

Father finally softened and asked me 
if I would care to try again. I thanked 
him but refused. It would have been 
useless. 

“What will you do then?” he asked me, 
not unkindly. “There is so little a boy 
can do in Ireland.” 

“I could go to America,” I suggested 
thoughtfully. 

“What would you do in America?” 

“America is a young country. Father. 
I would find something to do; something 
that has a future.” 

“Think it over, boy, and don’t say any¬ 
thing to your mother until you have made 
up your mind.” 


Failure and Farewell 173 

Once again I sat in a Cork bound train. 
Once again, I beheld the emerald green 
fields, the whitewashed cottages with their 
yellow thatched roofs of straw and stone 
chimneys pouring forth delicate blue, 
transparent turf smoke. Once again I 
laid eyes on Lismore Castle and the silver 
ribbon at its feet that is the River Black- 
water. Once again I passed through 
Cork, the diamond in the unclean setting. 
But there was no joy in them for me. My 
ticket was a single ticket. 

As I boarded the liner for America, I 
turned and looked back at the land and 
in that fleeting moment I knew the pain 
of a broken heart. 



















































































































































